Month: January 2013

Grade Your Front Office Team, Dentists!

Do you wonder how your front office team handles calls? At MDPM Consulting, we’re problem solvers. In some cases, we build a dental website that draws excellent traffic, but something mysterious keeps the dentist’s appointment book from filling up with new patients. We analyze user experience, look at how long visitors remain on various pages of the website, where they enter and where they leave. In most cases, everything seems perfectly aligned for transition – that is, the potential patient has every reason to book an appointment. What’s the stumbling block?

Returning Emails Correctly

Do all of the email forms on your website work? Do the emails funnel to one person? What’s your office’s procedure for returning emails? Digital communication is not going away. In fact, texting is replacing email, in many cases. A dentist should have full confidence that: 1) email forms on the website work; 2) a team member returns emails and texts within 24 hours; 3) all emails and texts that do not transition into new patients are kept on a list for weekly follow up calls until the potential patient responds. Also, email signatures should be consistent throughout the practice. Every team member who might communicate via email needs to include the dental practice logo, website, and phone number in his or her email signature. Read More

HIPAA Forms on Dental Websites: Are You in Compliance?

As a dental marketing firm, MDPM understands the rules and regulations dentists are held to – the standards for doctors are much higher than those for professionals outside the medical industry. Recently, the ADA distributed an electronic newsletter that mentioned the requirement for dentists to have HIPAA privacy practices displayed on their websites. Are you in compliance with this federal regulation?

The Mandate for HIPAA Notice on Dentist Websites

Code of Federal Regulations, Title 45 – Public Wellfare states:

(3) Specific requirements for electronic notice. (i) A covered entity that maintains a web site that provides information about the covered entity’s customer services or benefits must prominently post its notice on the web site and make the notice available electronically through the web site.

How Dentists Should Comply

Current clients of MDPM should send their HIPAA forms via fax (877-492-8838) or .pdf file (seo@moderndentalmarketing.com), and we will immediately post your form, which will be your notice and, thus, will make your practice compliant on this issue. If you are not an MDPM client dentist, contact your current webmaster and request that your HIPAA form be posted as soon as possible. Should you run into problems, feel free to call MDPM for assistance. We are here to serve dentists with reliable, compliant dental marketing solutions.

If you do not have a HIPAA form, visit the ADA website for more information.

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Dentist Reputation Management and Online Reviews

Disgruntled Former Employees Leaving Fake Reviews

I received a call from a dear client of mine one weekend. He had recently experienced some disappointing behavior in a long-time employee, and he had to let her go. The problem was, this employee had the passwords to his social networking accounts, blog, website CMS, and other important online media. Could she login and wreak havoc, out of anger? Would she leave fake, bad reviews about him on Yelp and Facebook?

Unfortunately, this is an HR issue that all businesses face in the Internet era. Here’s another example. Recently, MDPM had a former employee create fake profiles and post negative reviews on Yelp, all within days of each other. The profiles were new and had reviewed 0-2 other businesses. We did not recognize the reviewers’ names, and some phrases they posted keyed us in on the fact that the reviews were fake. However, we can’t get them removed. We followed the advice in this article, and we’ve been as pleased as can be expected, without crossing ethical lines and compromising integrity.

Angry Former Patients Posting Scathing Reviews

Fake and real reviews, more negative than positive, have fueled a multi-million dollar industry of reputation management. Angry people are more likely to vent online than are pleased patients. Late last year, I helped a frustrated dentist as he dealt with a negative review from a one-time patient.  The patient was unhappy about the charges for his dental work, specifically that his dental insurance did not cover what he thought it would, yet he still had to pay. The work was done, and done well. He left a long rant on the dentist’s Google Places page, visible to all potential patients. What could the dentist do? Google has no phone number to call when this happens; besides, as a third party, though they provide the means for reviews, they don’t want to get involved in disputes. Read More