.
Websites are a key resource for patients who are actively seeking medical care. Websites are effective at attracting new patients and making it easier for existing patients to interact with medical practices.

Triage  Within this guide, we are exploring the notion of empowering your website to assist your office with patient triage.  By this, we mean that medical websites should be designed to sort out and meet the needs of patients in the same way that a medical office would.

1. Urgently sick patients who need to go to the front of the line should be able to find office hours and phone numbers directly on the homepage.
2. Patients who are feeling poorly but don’t need immediate attention might not feel like talking on the phone right then and there.  They should be able to request an appointment through the website and handle the details over the phone when the scheduling assistant calls them shortly after.
3. Parents who need to schedule a school or sports physical for their child appreciate the convenience of requesting an appointment through the website weeks in advance.

Usability  Medical practice websites should assist patients and the practice with a number of fundamental day to day processes such as providing access to printable custom driving directions, patient forms and general education.  Access to and interaction with these tools should be simple to understand and easy to use.  Here is an example along with explanations below:

	Vital navigation & information are “above the fold” and require little to no scrolling, even on a laptop.
	. Users can scroll down the homepage to learn the basic highlights without having to click deeper or can click opt to learn more. This also helps with SEO.
	. Simple navigation to the most used & most requested functions that patients look for. These links can be used to “drive” patients to portions of the site.
	. New & existing patients can schedule through the website. Once they fill out this form, three things happen automatically: 1) A copy is sent to the practice. 2) The patient receives a copy. 3)The patient is re-directed to a page with next step instructions.
.	. Provides link to high level information and downloads of all forms. Also gives a direct link to forms in the pull down for faster access.
.	. Links to high level services by demographic / age. Allows for navigation to specific services by demographic / age.
.	. Delivers custom turn by turn directions & printable map from patient’s location directly to your office on-the-fly.
	. Phone number, address & office hours are always visible and accessible. Requires no additional clicking for a new or existing patient to be able to contact the practice by phone to schedule an appointment.

.
Do you work at a medical practice? If so, fill out the form below and we will email you a printable copy of this best practice guide along with a link to the demonstration website shown in it.