Why have an office website?

Why an office website? Who needs it? I am busy enough already!
If you don't already have an office website, this is probably your question.
	I already spend all my time trying to keep up being a good orthopedist!
Now you want be to be a webhead, too! No way! (Note the pocket protector!)

But in the Information Age

with 50% of Americans already using the internet, and with medical information their #2 reason for going on-line (you already guessed that sex was #1, didn't you?), the medical office in the future will be as likely to have a website as a telephone or a yellow pages ad. Remember what you said about getting a microwave or a cell phone? "No reason to get one" changed into "I couldn't live without it!" pretty fast, didn't it? Same with a website.

There are as many reasons to have an office website as there are physicians who have them. However, certain themes constantly recur: promotion of your practice, patient education about specific disease entities, dissemination of information about your practice (hours, map, etc), and similar issues. If you think about it, and get to know what is already out there, you may find that you are ready to at least explore the idea.

Another idea: time and money are usually the things that limit us. With the internet, its potential and its rapidly evolving capabilities, we are more limited by our imagination than by either time or money.

Once you decide to have a site, you need to do three basic things: decide what you want it to do, design it (either yourself or someone else), give it an address, and host the address on a server.