Have you ever wondered how patients go about choosing their doctors and making their healthcare decisions? Before the Internet, the decision-making process was relatively simple. Most patients chose doctors who were close to their home, or selected those who were referred to them by friends, family members, or colleagues. Word-of-mouth marketing is even more powerful today thanks to social media and the Web, but patients now also taking the time to peruse medical websites, read doctor blogs, and looking at ratings and reviews sites for information about various service providers in their area.

Appature created the infographic below to illustrate exactly what methods patients use to find a doctor, and how many of these patients are using social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to seek out more information. Results of an October 2010 eMarketer Study show that there were approximately 1,220,000 global monthly searches for the keyword “physicians” and that 27,200,000 websites appeared on a Google search for the keyword “find a doctor”.

Reviewing the information below can give you a good idea of how active many of your patients really are online, and what types of resources patients are tapping into in order to find you. (Click on image for larger version.)

How Patients Leverage Technology to Find a Doctor

 

 

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