Just as posited in a prior article featured on KevinMD.com, where it was suggested that implementing an EMR/EHR has significant attraction to prospective physician candidates, I would like to also recommend that a similar stance can be adopted with respect your practice’s your web presence.

In other words, is your website putting your best foot forward for not only prospective patients, but also to prospective physicians and others who may potentially join your organization?

It wasn’t all that long ago where I would have an interaction like that which I outline below. I would be speaking on the phone with a prospective physician candidate for one of the practices I represented for the purpose of physician recruitment. Toward the end of the conversation I would get the question that from time-to-time I would dread:

“Wow, Bo… this sounds like it would be ideal for me.”

“I sure think so, doctor. Why don’t you send me your CV so I can present it to my client?”

“Sure, I will do that, but can you give me their website address so I can check them out online?”

“Um, well, here’s the thing … they don’t have one.”

“Oh.”

Now this was normally followed by my explanation of how this busy and bustling practice has just not yet pulled the trigger on getting a website designed and that it would be forthcoming soon. Believe it or not, there are sill a huge number of practices of great repute that have not taken that leap into having a website. I often hear this described as on a practice’s “to do list.”

However, for physicians who are younger in years, having a website is not so much of a leap, but rather just an expected part of good business practices. Not having one is really viewed as an archaic notion and with every year that passes, this becomes even more true.

Think about it. Most of those coming out of training now have been exposed to the web for the entirety of their adult lives and your practice not having a website is really the same as a traveling salesman saying he doesn’t have business cards. It doesn’t look good.

I fixed this problem within my firm for our clients because I was tired of getting off on the wrong foot with candidates who wanted to see a website. Quite simply, in hiring a database programmer, I also hired a very talented web designer and, as a courtesy to our physician recruitment clients who needed it, we would also design a website for them that was simple, professional and that looked attractive to physician candidates who were considering joining their practice.

This has gone very well for us and our clients and we continue to do this, as we find it to be a very useful, value-added service. Moreover, it is not only reserved for those who don’t have a website. as we often have clients who were not behind the times in getting a website, but rather were in fact very early adopters to where their websites have become so dated and just outright bad — relative to more recent web design standards — that we offer to redesign their site for the purpose of bringing them into modernity.

Look at it like this. Nowadays if a person meets, sees or is at least told about someone they might find attractive and they want to know more about them, what is often the very first course of action that they take? They Google the person’s name and, whether it is fair or not, they form an immediate opinion of the person based upon what they find online.

Your practice is no different. Does it not bode well for your recruitment if a candidate Googling your practice name finds a very nice and accurate representation of a thriving organization?

I think the answer is obvious, but you would be amazed at the number of people who overlook the role their website plays in the recruitment process.

So what does your website say about you and your practice? If it either doesn’t exist, or it is a source of embarrassment, then perhaps you should consider changing that before you endeavor to aggressively recruit additional physicians.

Bo Claypool is a physician recruiter who is the managing partner of Monroe & Weisbrod, a psychiatry-specific physician recruitment firm.