Good exposure: Improving patient relations

Volunteering at health fairs, coaching a team, speaking to a service club. Some doctors find doing good in the community helps their practices do well.

By Cheryl Jackson, AMNews staff. Sept. 2, 2002.

The staff of Southfield, Mich., internist Lonnie Joe Jr., MD, insists that he tell them whether he's doing any volunteer work over the weekend. That's because when he does, on Monday morning the office phones are ringing off the hook with people who want to be his patients.

Dr. Joe didn't start doing health screenings, speaking to book clubs and nursing homes, or interacting with other community groups with the idea of attracting more patients to his practice. But that's what has happened.

"It's a better way of public relations and publicity than advertising in the newspapers or yellow pages," Dr. Joe has learned. "It's a 'see me, feel me, hear me, touch me' thing."

He's not alone in that discovery.

Physicians are finding that the goodwill they acquire when they appear at community health fairs, coach local youth sports team or speak to civic groups about health issues often leads to more traffic at their practices.

"We always see an increase in phone calls and appointments being made by new patients," Dr. Joe said.

It's a good way of recruiting patients. And doctors say physician volunteers should come to events prepared to capitalize.

"It's always a surprising thing how many people in the audience don't have a physician," Dr. Joe said. "We encourage physicians to bring business cards to these kinds of health fairs and presentations."

Not that you should should look at volunteer activities solely as a way of expanding your practice, some doctors say.

"Part of our job is patient education. That's been the way that physicians have gotten exposure all along," Dr. Joe said. "It's never intended to be a way of increasing your patient volume, but as a side effect, that's what happens." [...]