Search engines are available to find any doctor, but is the doctor available when you need him?
In a research study by Medical Practice Insider which analyzed 17,253 searches from Google, Bing and Yahoo which had led to Doctor.com platform through queries like, ‘need’, ‘want’ and ‘find’ revealed that practice owners and managers need to rethink about office hours and off-hours. The study is valuable for practice marketing consultants who wish to improve their performance in terms of scheduling their online ads. Two third of search requests are between 9 am and 5 pm which are normal business hours, while from 5 pm to 9 pm, only one third of patients are trying to find a doctor. Apart from that, a lot of activity takes place at night.
The study revealed that patients mostly search for doctors on Monday and the volume keeps on decreasing as the week goes by. So, providers should always be ready on Monday for a tough day, while if possible patients should avoid Mondays, as their physicians are likely to be occupied. The study further stated that Saturday and Sunday mornings have the highest number of traffic in the week.
Relatively high numbers of searches are seen between 10 pm and 12 am for care providers and at those times, very few providers are open for any kind of response. So, this time is a potential business opportunity for small healthcare providers. On Sunday evenings, a lot of searches are done but providers are mostly unavailable at that time too.
Practices who can offer late-night phone or office support services are extremely valuable because less than 20% of practices on Doctor.com have office hours after 7:00 pm, this number further decreases to a mere 1% of office hours after 9:00 pm. With the search data revelation, this is a potential gap with an untapped opportunity.
Time and tide waits for none. If you miss an opportunity that is time specific, you will potentially lose a customer. In a demanding market like healthcare, neither the potential to lose money can be avoided nor can the responsibility to provide high quality service should be delayed.
