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Monitor, Maintain, Evaluate, Update
Time to Complete: 1-2 hours on a regular basis
Difficulty: Easy -- needs ongoing support
Outcome: An updated website that works
Steps
Monitor your website
If you're working with a website development company, its staff may do some of the following work. If you've developed your own website, you'll do this work:
- Check search engine ranking.
- Analyze website usage reports.
Maintain your website
If you're working with a website development company, its staff may do the first item, but your practice will be responsible for the second item.
- Check the website regularly. Does it download quickly? Are any images missing, links broken, words misspelled? Fix any problems detected.
- Respond promptly to emails from visitors. Develop a "stable" of standard replies so the information provided is uniform.
Evaluate, update and improve your website
- Regularly ask staff for feedback about how the website is working, and for what they hear from patients about how it's working.
- Survey patients periodically for their feedback. Download and use this survey (1-page Word document; About downloading files) or create your own survey.
- The website team should analyze feedback and website usage reports, identify areas that need improvement and develop a plan to accomplish those improvements. The most important parts of the plan, and questions to answer, are: What needs to be done? Who's going to do it? By when will it be done?
- When your practice has news, such as an upcoming event or a new physician, update your website. Nothing encourages return visits better than fresh, timely information!
What You'll Need
- Website reports and time to read them
- Time to review the website and answer emails
- Staff feedback
- A patient survey
- Time to analyze data and feedback and to develop a plan
- Time to implement improvements and updates
- Decision-making authority
Resource
Download this survey (1-page Word document; About downloading files) and use it to get feedback from patients.
Where to Go for Help
If you and your staff don't have the time or the desire to do this work, consider asking the website development company to do it, or hire a consultant to do it. The AAFP Buyer's Guide can help you find a consultant.
Once your practice website is well established, watch the AAFP video "Improve the Patient Experience" for an introduction to these additional online services you could add through a secure patient portal: same-day appointment scheduling and e-visits.
Once your practice website is well established, watch the AAFP video "Improve the Patient Experience" for an introduction to these additional online services you could add through a secure patient portal: same-day appointment scheduling and e-visits.
Tell Us How It's Going
Congratulations! Tell us how your practice website is working for you and your patients.
Join a free collaborative online network committed to practice transformation. Learn more about Delta-Exchange.
This Patient-Centered Medical Home section of the AAFP web site was supported in part by a grant from Merck & Co.
This Patient-Centered Medical Home section of the AAFP web site was supported in part by a grant from Merck & Co.
Create a Practice Website
Monitor, Maintain, Evaluate, Update
