Fauquier ENT Social Media Update

About once per year, I like to reassess how Fauquier ENT is doing online ever since it was digitally born in 2005. And over the years, I am happy to say it has grown substantially beyond anything anyone would have expected. I would like to think it's because quality and trusted information is provided, but who knows? Overall, the website now gets about 28,000 hits per day or almost one million hits per month. Since 2005, it has received more than 13 million views. Of these, there has…

3/20/2015 0

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Online Healthcare Plagiarism (Even Among ENTs)

Image courtesy of cooldesign at  FreeDigitalPhotos.net It is not just high school students who are committing plagiarism... it seems to be occurring even among healthcare professionals (even other ENTs) and more astoundingly even among healthcare organizations who portray someone else's work as their own online ! In this day of a digital footprint that can be traced to anybody at anytime, such plagiarism is not only unwarranted from an ethical perspective, but even foolhardy, because…

11/09/2014 1

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Is Your Metal Implant MRI Safe? There's a Website for That...

Although one could always contact the manufacturer or surgeon who performed your metal implantation directly to determine whether it is MRI safe or not, there's also a website that contains a comprehensive database of metal implants and how compatible they are with MRI scans. Who knew that certain metal implants are compatible with MRI scans up to a certain strength? Who knew a metal implant that may not necessarily be compatible with MRI, but given enough time after implantation (us…

1/17/2014 0

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Law Firm Launches Website for Tinnitus Sufferers

It would be a sad day indeed if a patient google searches a medical condition or symptom and the first page of results are all pointing to a law firm. In perhaps the beginning towards this possibility, personal injury law firm, Mercury Legal Online , has launched a website dedicated to patients who suffer tinnitus and hearing loss sustained from time working in a job that contained a lot of loud noise without using hearing protection . Thanks to  @earsurgeonuk who brought this to my att…

9/09/2013 0

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Obtaining "Authorship" for Improved Search Rankings

As most specialists in search engines know, good and original content is important for search rankings.  However, these two elements are sorely lacking when it comes to medically-related articles. "Good" Medicine by its very nature is complex and full of jargon that is difficult for the lay person to understand. Furthermore, even if jargon-free many medically related articles are too ambiguous and often do not answer questions which people specifically search for. So, when a phys…

1/01/2013 0

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Keyword Optimization for Medical Websites

As a general rule of thumb, physicians are terrible at running a business... including their own practice. This unfortunate inability also extends to managing practice websites. When it comes to websites, most physicians take the attitude of "if you build it, they will come" which is doomed to failure. The better way of phrasing it would be "only if patients can find you, they might come." Finding you is the first step... And one important element of accomplishing th…

12/16/2012 0

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Is Social Media Bad for Doctors?

I was recently asked to participate as a speaker in a panel discussion on social media next year in Canada and while preparing my thoughts on this subject, I was pondering several big questions regarding the why and pitfalls of social media for healthcare professionals. There's the obvious "WHY" a physician should participate in social media . But perhaps even a more basic concern for a physician deciding whether to pursue social media or not is whether it may even be a bad …

11/11/2012 2

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Healthcare Mobile Web Presence

It is pretty much a given that healthcare organizations, medical offices, and physicians maintain a web presence given how frequently consumers turn to the internet and google especially for health information. Given that... I would like to point out that more and more of this web traffic occurs on a smartphone rather than a computer and in an effort to retain consumers who seek healthcare, it behooves that any web presence be also mobile friendly. According to my own personal web statist…

9/24/2012 0

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Website Development Help

Given how extensive the practice website is (250+ webpages; 1300+ if including blog ), I often get asked by patients and other offices how did I go about developing it. First off, I am fortunate that I have some computer programming skills and have been creating websites since the 1990s. I have decent HTML knowledge with a dash of CSS understanding. I am clueless with  making new javascripts, but know how to use ones that have been already created. As such this baseline knowledge of …

9/02/2012 0

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Healthcare Websites and Blogs Worth Anything?

I wrote in the past that healthcare blogging was in some ways a losing proposition when compared to entertainment news in terms of web traffic and search queries. However, when it comes to ad revenue and how much a website is worth to potential buyers, healthcare topics (as well as sports) are king in monetary generation. Flippa is a website that mediates the buying and selling of websites. They also produced a handy visual aid infographic based on their internal statistics. …

8/24/2012 0

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Costs of Surgery... How Is This Calculated?

So I have blogged about this topic a few times in the past, but there still seems to be confusion regarding the costs of surgery. As mentioned in the past, the cost of surgery is broken down into basically 3 separate charges: • Surgeon's charge • Anesthesia's charge • Hospital's charge So... after surgery, a patient typically will get 3 bills; one each from surgeon, anesthesia, and hospital. At least in the United States, the three charges are completely separate from ea…

6/05/2012 4

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Surgery Center Posts Prices of Procedures

Given the uproar over the lack of transparency of surgery prices , it was only a matter of time before an operating facility  in the United States ( oversea facilities have already done so) takes the step of posting the cost of surgery ... a set cost that is exactly what a patient pays. Complete cost transparency. The Surgery Center of Oklahoma is an AAAHC accredited facility since 1998 and has over 40 participating surgeons. And they are the first that I'm aware of that has taken t…

6/03/2012 3

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