Over the past few months we have conducted a research study in which we contacted 418 hospitals in Asia, Europe, South America, Africa between May 13, 2009-June 29, 2009. Our research has revealed many significant obstacles that prevent potential patients from contacting hospitals and clinics for medical tourism. We have put together a list to help you improve your hospital’s website and increase the number of patients who will contact you for treatment.
Recommendations for Your Hospital’s Website:
Telephone Numbers Listed on Your Site
- Include the telephone number for people abroad (ex: Local callers: 020-6048-100 International callers: +31 (0)20-6048-100)
- Don’t forget to add your country code to the phone number on your site
- Specify office hours in local time. Also in EST & GMT if possible
For example:
Telephone Recommendations
- Automated operators should give English option early
- Make sure that your operator speaks English
- If possible offer 24/7 hotline for overseas calls. If you cannot then be sure to have a working answering machine that is checked regularly for follow-up
- Make sure that your recorded announcements are clear
Email Recommendations
- Site must have an email address. If you fear spamming here are some options:
- Create a separate email address just for the site
- Create a separate off-site address just for the site (yahoo, gmail)
- Write the address in words “at” “dot”
- Add a Captcha or other security feature
- Email address should be easy to find
- Email address should be clickable and immediately open either a form or blank email
- It should be easy to copy and paste the email address
- If you have an online form always give an option for direct email
English Site
- If you are appealing to international patients for medical tourism, you must have an English site
- Link to the English site should be easy to find on your Hospital’s main site
General Site Links
- Ensure that internal links to branches, departments, alternative URL’s are working (not broken)
Online appointment
- Give an option for patients to make appointments online
Proof reading
- Have someone proof read the site for spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, etc. These little mistakes make the site appear unprofessional
Flash
- Be careful how you use flash. Many people don’t have patience to wait
- Always have an option to “skip” the flash - This option button should be clear
We hope that this information will help you to improve your hospital website and enable potential patients to contact you easily.