Three out of ten patients that ophthalmologist Juliana Barbi consults in her clinic in Belo Horizonte (MG) come from Instagram. Some of them live in other Brazilian states or even abroad.
“These patients form bonds with me even before the first consultation, because of the content I produce in my profile. They come to the office only to get to know me in person, because they already decided to begin treatment with me. So, the power of identification of Instagram is very strong”, states Barbi.
Doctor Barbi has been investing in producing social media content since 2018. She makes all the content, (script, recording, editing and posting) by herself.
And no, you do not need to dance performances to lure the right public (but you can, if you want). Barbi talks about medical procedures, shows patients’ “before and after” and shares about her professional – and sometimes personal – routine with her more than 10 thousand followers.
Ophthalmologist Juliana Barbi’s Instagram. The doctor has been investing in the social network for 5 years.
Doctor Barbi produces content on a daily basis. Usually, “Stories” videos that, many times, have space in her feed as Reels. “I look for dividing one single subject in various short videos to draw the follower’s attention and not to get boring. For example, I can divide a subject as “eyelid surgery” into post-surgery care, stitches, scar, etc.”, she explains..
When this article was written (October 5, 2023), she posted a Reel in her feed, showing a patient and demonstrating how a superior and inferior blepharoplasty ends. She shared her part in an interview on her story, a personal reel about wrinkles while smiling, and the recording of the next episode of her videocast “ENTRE(vistas)”, that goes live every other week on her Instagram.
In the videocast, the ophthalmologist invites professionals of healthcare and even other areas related to her work. For example, a tennis teacher highlighted the importance of knowing the dominant eye to make contact with the ball during a game. And a makeup artist taught tricks to improve the appearance of the eyes. “The idea is to diversify the subjects commonly addressed on my social profile with different topics related to vision in some way”, she explains.
TikTok and website
Recently, Barbi also signed in to TikTok, a social network to share short videos. A very successful platform, mainly among young people. “They may be my future patients”, she reflects.
In addition to social media, the doctor has a website where she presents her specialties, services and courses (including tips on content creation).
Barbi considers it fundamental to invest in communication technologies to reach good results with medical marketing. A professional profile on Instagram may be the first step. The second one is a website and a TikTok account. “Using websites to target an older audience, instagram to target middle aged patients and even tiktok to reach the youngest audience”, she says. However, she also emphasizes: “People who do not do it, end up falling behind”.
You do not need to be so extroverted as the ophthalmologist to go “viral” in social networks, as some fellow professionals believe, you only need to be yourself. “For the profile to be good, it is essential to be authentic. I do not show anything that I am not. I talk before the camera exactly as I work with my patient in the consultation office”, she states.
New rules for medical marketing
Recently, the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM) updated the rules for medical marketing. The new text, more aligned to the current needs of communication, including the medical class, affirms that the doctor may share their work on social networks, advertise equipment available in their workplace and, for educational purposes, to use images of patients or photo databases.
The proposal, according to the CFM is to assure the doctor has a right to show people the range of his/her services, respecting the market rules, but preserving medicine as a support activity. The new resolution authorizes advertising consultation prices and making of marketing campaigns.
“Before, I showed only a small part of the procedure and treatment results. Now I can share the ‘before and after’, of course, respecting the patients who authorized sharing their images. It is important for the patient to know better each step of a blepharoplasty, for example”, she explains.
Patient Journey
Medical marketing is one of the steps of the patient journey. In order to consolidate all investments being made to bring a patient to the office, it is fundamental to offer a great experience.
For example, Barbi searched to improve patient care by acquiring an Eyer handheld fundus camera. The equipment works coupled with a smartphone and carries out high-quality retina exams in a few minutes. Seconds after capturing the image, the device-embedded artificial intelligence, EyerMaps, identifies possible retinal alterations.
Barbi has used the Eyer handheld fundus camera since 2019.
“I explain what the optical nerve and macula are and, if it is the case, any alteration that may suggest pathologies, such as glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, among other diagnoses primarily reachable through fundoscopy. They think it is great, get impressed with this technology and feel welcome”, she tells.
Eyer is non-mydriatic, offers the patient more comfort and speeds up the clinic service flow. “Nowadays, Eyer is my fundus examination. I do not even use a slit lamp anymore. I carry out the retinography and promptly store the patient’s image in EyerCloud for future follow-up”, she says. EyerCloud is a cloud system synchronized with the Eyer camera to manage patients’ data and exams.
Barbi examines all her patients using Eyer, except for the ones who already have a report. Using Eyer, there have been over one thousand exams since 2019.. “I already identified choroidal nevus from a routine exam in a preoperative of a preventive consultation. I sent it to a retinal specialist for evaluation. He found an extreme-peripheral retinal tear that was properly treated by laser before the surgery. Eyer was able to detect it and I felt safe to send the result to the retinal specialist before proceeding the surgery”, she recalls.
In terms of technology cost-effectiveness, Barbi believes it is worthwhile. “For doctors who serve patients with medical insurance, retinography costs may be sent to the insurance”, she ends.
About Eyer
Barbi holding Eyer handheld fundus camera.
Portability, connectivity and integration with intelligent functions, as EyerMaps, along with a more accessible value, allow Eyer to contribute to increase the access to retina exams.
The equipment supports the diagnosis of more than 50 diseases, such as glaucoma, cataract, diabetic retinopathy, DMRI, retinoblastoma, hypertensive retinopathy and ocular toxoplasmosis. Currently, more than 10 million exams have been already carried out in Brazil, The United States, Chile, Colombia and Japan.
Eyer has recently been approved in the Arab Emirates and is going through the regulatory process for marketing in Mexico, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
About Phelcom
Phelcom Technologies is a Brazilian medtech company headquartered in São Carlos, inland São Paulo. The company’s history began in 2016, when three young researchers – a physicist, an electric engineer and a computing engineer (PHysics, ELectronics, COMputing) – created a handheld fundus camera integrated with an integrated smartphone.
The project of the first prototype was born from the interest of company partner Diego Lencione on visual health, since his brother has a condition that severely compromises his retina and vision and has since childhood.
In 2019, Phelcom launched its first product in the Brazilian market: Eyer handheld fundus camera. Now, the technology has already reached more than two million people all over Brazil and the countries where it’s available.
In four years, the company has already taken part in more than 100 social actions and has recently been elected one of the 10 most innovative companies in Brazil by Forbes.
Google ads for doctors is a tool that helps you bring new patients to your office. We all know that people search on Google for what to do, where to go, what to buy and even which doctor to choose. This resource allows your ad to be shown exactly when someone is looking for services as yours.Thus, you can increase site visits, appointments and, consequently, the number of patients. But, how to attract more customers with Google ads for doctors? Learn how to in this article.
Google ADS for doctors: how it works
Google Ads is a Google Ads platform. It allows you to create online ads with sponsored links, which will appear to the user according to the search keywords.By this, your advertising may appear on YouTube videos, in Google search engine, on sites related to your area of activity, applications, etc. All depends on the strategy your team sets.The position of your ad on Google will depend on three factors: the relevance of the keyword to the subject searched, as well as the quality of the ad and the landing page; the maximum CPC (cost per click) bid, a comparison of the advertiser with the highest value per click; and the Ad rank, an average value between the previous two.The tool also delivers the metrics of the carried out campaigns. This way you can evaluate the number of impressions and ad clicks, as well as identify the users who clicked. Thus, it allows you to find out which type of ad performed best and better control the return on your online investments.By the way, the charge for the ad only occurs when you receive clicks. In addition, you can also limit the amount spent for each click received.
Google ADS for doctors: how it works
Check a step-by-step guide to create online campaigns with Google ADS:1.Set the target audienceWhich patients do you want to attract? Information such as age, job, location, level of education and income help create your target audience.2.Create the personasPersonas are ideal, detailed profiles of the patient you want to attract. In addition to the information above, one must analyze lifestyle, habits, behaviors, frustrations, difficulties, leisure, etc.3. Create the campaignWith personas in hand, you can define which type of media is most consumed and make ads there. Example: blogs and YouTube.4. Choose keywordsThis step is critical for your ad to appear or not to your persona. Here, you need to define the keywords that are most related to your specialty and that should draw the attention of your potential patient.5. Select your goalIn the tool, adjust your ad based on the desired results, such as receiving more calls at your clinic, attracting more patients, or directing people to your site.6. Decide where to advertiseYou decide where you want to display the ads and Google will show it to the right people.7. Create your messageShow off what’s special about your office in three short sentences to win patients over, or add images to create eye-catching banner ads.8. Set your budget limitYou’ll never pay more than your monthly budget and can adjust or pause whenever you want. In addition, the platform shows the estimated results based on the chosen budget.Google Ads can be a tool that helps you find ways to improve your ads and generate better results, thus freeing the doctor to focus on what he knows best: serving patients.It also provides reports, insights, and tips for you to track your progress and further optimize ads.Another tip: create Google My Business, a free and easy-to-use tool that allows healthcare institutions to manage their online presence on Google, including Search and Maps.To do this, you can create a profile of your business with all the essential data. That way, when people search directly by your name or the office or by keywords related to your specialty, Google will show your professional profile.See a step-by-step guide to create your profile in this article.Reviewed by Paulo Schor, ophthalmologist, associate professor and director of innovation of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and collaborator of the Faculty of Medicine of the Albert Einstein Hospital.Follow Phelcom’s blog and see tips on how to improve the digital marketing strategy of medical offices and clinics.Subscribe
Unfortunately, doctor and stress may walk side by side. The routine of these professionals is often quite troubled, with long days in different workplaces, several patients, relationship with suffering and death and difficult decision-making. The pandemics worsened this scenario, even more so for those who have been on the front line.
For example, a survey conducted by the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM), with 1.6 thousand doctors, from September to December 2020, revealed that the pandemics impacted the life of 96%, either increasing the level of stress (22.9%), generating a feeling of fear and panic (14.6%), reducing the time dedicated to family, meals and leisure (14.5%) or decreasing the time and quality of sleep (7.6%).
Therefore, it is essential to invest in building a balanced life. For this, we picked 8 tips on how to better manage stress in everyday life. Check it out!
1. Sleep tight
This tip is essential and also the most difficult to follow by doctors. Long working hours and even stress itself make it difficult to keep a good sleep routine. However, it is essential to prioritize good sleep, which is as fundamental for the body as healthy eating and the practice of physical exercises, for example.
Sleep deprivation deeply impacts health and generates stress due to the growth of cortisol and ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone) levels. It affects the cognitive system, increases irritability and anxiety, modifies the body’s immune response, collaborates for the emergence of diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes and changes appetite. It also favors obesity, since it reduces the hormone that causes satiety (leptin) and stimulates the hormone that increases hunger (ghrelin).
Therefore, seek to sleep 7-8 hours a day. To do this, set schedules to create a routine and avoid electronic devices and stimulating food (sweets, coffee, soft drinks), coffee and alcoholic beverages two hours in advance.
2. Take balanced meals
Often, when we are stressed, we feel the need to consume food high in fat and/or sugar, in addition to alcohol. Instead of relaxing, we may face even more problems, such as agitation, overweight and obesity.
So invest in a healthy diet with more intake of greens, fruits, vegetables, white meat and water. For example, dark green vegetables, which are rich in vitamins, folic acid and fiber, and lean proteins, such as fish and poultry, contribute to reduce oxidation, which may be related to increased inflammation.
3. Do physical activities
So far, we have not spoken any news that you do not know already. But that doesn’t mean you can put it into practice, does it? Including physical exercises in everyday life can be challenging, but it is essential to keep the “doctor and stress” relationship more balanced.
Can you set 30 minutes a day? No? Then do it in 15 minutes. Regularity will increase endorphin production. If the activity is under sunlight, you will also have serotonin, which helps in mood and focus.
4. Organize your day
Not having an organized schedule causes even more stress, because you cannot identify daily priorities, nor which urgent tasks demand your attention. .
Being clear on which subjects are most important helps you keep control. So, before you start the day, set your tasks and remark your priorities.
5. Have moments of leisure
Feeling that life has become only work, family and personal obligations may demotivate you, cause sadness and even depression. That is why leisure moments are essential.
For example, if you like to hang out with family and friends, arrange dinners and visits. Also take some time for hobbies: reading, playing sports, watching films, marathoning series, playing with pets, etc.
It’s hard to imagine how to fit this into the routine, but try. Undoubtedly, stress will decrease by relaxing and focusing your attention on other things.
Meditation is proven to help reduce stress. By paying attention only to the present moment, mind and body connect, relaxing and slowing your thoughts.
The technique involves conscious breathing and the emptying of the mind. This does not mean that you will not think about anything during meditation, but that you should not cling to thoughts. Just watch them and let them pass.
There are guided meditations with various goals, such as relieving stress, increasing concentration, relaxing, etc. Currently, it is possible to watch some videos on YouTube or download applications for this purpose.
7. Mindfulness
Have you ever heard of mindfulness? The practice simply consists in being attentive of body and mind in the present moment. That is, neither remembering the past nor thinking about the future. Only in the present.
Are you having lunch? Pay attention exclusively to the food, chewing, flavors and textures. Talking to a friend? Practice active listening: focus entirely on what is being said, instead of just listening passively while you’re already working out the answer.
Going to play a sport? Notice the movements of the body and the sensations that the activity produces. Will you read or watch your favorite series? Just focus on that moment – say goodbye to scrolling the mobile screen on social networks while watching TV. Try your best to avoid your thoughts being in that conversation from last year or in the bill you need to pay tomorrow.
The technique has existed for 2,500 years and generates benefits such as reduced stress, increased focus and concentration at work, reduced emotional reactivity and improved cognitive flexibility, among others.
8. Seek professional help
In extreme cases of stress, seek professional help. The condition can worsen to anxiety, depression and burnout syndrome if you do not have the proper follow-up.
Take care of yourself too.
Reviewed by Paulo Schor, ophthalmologist, associate professor and director of innovation of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and collaborator of the Faculty of Medicine of the Albert Einstein Hospital.
Follow Phelcom blog and stay on top of news about doctors and stress.
Google is the most used search engine on the internet. There are 5.5 billion searches a day worldwide. In fact, the platform brings answers to countless and unimaginable types of questions.
In addition, it also takes the internet user wherever he/she wants. With Google My Business, companies can provide full address, opening hours, contacts and photos, among other information.
With a single click, your potential patients can find your clinic, know the services you offer and schedule an appointment. All this at no cost to you.
So how about attracting more customers using Google My Business for doctors? Learn more about the tool, how to register and the advantages for your business.
Google My Business for doctors – what is it?
Google My Business for doctors is a free and easy-to-use tool that enables offices, clinics, hospitals, laboratories and other healthcare institutions to manage their online presence on Google, including Search and Maps.
To do this, you can create a profile of your business with all the essential data. That way, when people search directly by your name or the office or by keywords related to your specialty, Google will show your professional profile.
Regarding keywords, the results presented by Google can be from the nearest locations or even from every city and in municipalities in the region.
Undoubtedly, having one-click access to all the information of your clinic is quite useful to patients. Will you make an appointment? Just “Google” and find the phone and service times. Is it the consultation date? Click on the address to open Maps right away.
In addition, it is possible to lure more customers. For example, when the internet user searches for “ophthalmologist in Vila Madalena”, Google will immediately show your clinic profile.
Another advantage is to increase interaction with your audience. The patient can call the registered number directly, send a message, leave comments or evaluate your office. And you can answer him/her, solving doubts or thanking the reviews.
By the way, evaluations help increasing your clinic reliability and increasingly rise your position on the search engine page. That is, the higher the chances of appearing in the first results on a keyword search. So, the better the “grades”, the more positive comments and interactions with the audience, the more your authority in the area grows.
This is because a good review and five stars, for example, helps to demonstrate your service excellence to potential customers. This influences their decision to schedule an appointment.
Reports are another benefit of Google My Business to doctors. The platform provides metrics such as number of followers and interactions on your profile through phone calls, visits to the registered site or route requests.
This way, you can know how customers research your business and where they come from, essential data for a more efficient digital marketing strategy.
Registering your office or medical clinic on Google My Business is easy. Read the step-by-step guide:
Create an email in Gmail;
Access Google website. At the top right, go to “Google Apps” and click ” My Business”;
To make sure there is no record of your business already, enter your name or that of the clinic. Then click ” Include your company on Google”;
Put the name and choose the business category;
Then allow the address to be included in Google Maps and direct searches;
Fill in the address fields;
Inform if you operate outside your workplace and the area you serve;
Include contact forms such as phone, website and email;
Upload images of your clinic. According to Google, Profiles with photos and videos receive 42% more route requests on Google Maps and 35% more clicks to access the site;
Confirm all data.
Finally, Google will send a code, by letter, to the address provided to confirm the veracity of the information registered. When you receive the letter, enter the code in the virtual area of Google My Business.
Ready! Your profile is up and visible to thousands of people who use Google.
Reviewed by Paulo Schor, ophthalmologist, associate professor and director of innovation of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and collaborator of the Faculty of Medicine of the Albert Einstein Hospital.
Managing medical clinics can, indeed, be a real challenge for doctors. Office management involves various simultaneous responsibilities, such as organizing data, financial control, personnel administration, marketing and patient experience, inter alia.
So, many assignments may incur in procedure failures, which can cause diverse losses. One of them is spending more than necessary. In fact, clinics may spend more money from not knowing nor measuring resources involved in all areas through assertive cost and investment plans.
That may also prevent healthy, responsible and profitable business growth. For this reason, we have selected 6 practical tips to reduce costs in the office. Check them out!
1. Organize and analyze billing and expenses
Undoubtedly, good financial management is one of the main requisites to avoid losses and decrease clinic costs. This requires developing an assertive planning with incomes and expenses.
In this sense, it is important to recognize and measure resources involved in all areas of the clinic. Therefore, you will have available values in hands to decide what direction to take and how to apply each one of them efficiently.
For example, checking all cash outflows allows identifying which processes spend a greater amount of financial resources.
Some tips to help you on this goal follow below:
Have a proper control of your cash flow;
Do not mix up personal and clinic accounts;
Automate internal processes;
Have a sound financial planning;
Follow expenses and incomes;
Use a good medical clinic management system.
Those are many data – and free time available is not a strength in the medical area. Therefore a medical software is essential to organize all them.
Nowadays, medical softwares help automating all the clinic internal processes. Their main functionalities include medical record storage, online calendar, control of inventory inputs and outputs, as well as financial, administrative and human resource – as doctors and employees – information.
For example, a consultation schedule through an online calendar is instantly shared in the system, as all the information that follow: doctor, payment method or healthcare plan, examinations, etc. This reduces the time a team dedicates to such tasks and increases productivity, focused in more complex activities. That is, increased operational efficiency.
It improves and speeds up financial management by providing concrete data that allow a wider view on the business. Having efficient indicators at hand – such as appointment/miss/cancellation rate, average ticket, new patient search, user retention and billing – allow an in-depth analysis of your business.
Thus, you can see exactly how to reduce office costs assertively. On the other hand, a medical software only for online calendar, without data access, may not pay off.
In this case, it is more economical to stick with the good old paper agenda.
3. Decrease patients that miss scheduled appointments
Undoubtedly, patients who miss the consultation – without prior notice or cancellation – are one of the most frequent difficulties in medical offices and clinics. This fact clearly impacts clinic incomes, disrupts the routine and wastes time.
Therefore, it is essential to adopt strategies to decrease absence and urgent cancellations rates. Learn 8 steps to reduce clinic costs with lacking patients:
Offer online scheduling;
Confirm the scheduled consultations through electronic tools;
Clearly provide address and communication channels;
Confirm with considerable advance;
Ensure a well managed calendar;
Ask for a previous payment of a percentage of the consultation;
Manage the patient journey;
Do not be late for the consultation.
How to put all this into practice? We made a step-by-step guide in this article.
4. Reduce use of office supplies
By opting for technological systems, daily use of paper in the office reduces significantly. For example, diaries and medical records become electronic. You also save money because you do not need do rent or buy printers, ink, maintenance and team workforce to fill out the papers.
More than reducing office costs and helping the environment, information also become centralized, which is important to have a 360º-view of your business.
5. Negotiate with suppliers.
By knowing the exact amount of supplies and materials at the exact time the office needs, you can negotiate more attractive values and prices with suppliers. Your purchases will be predictable and also an advantage to your partners.
It is undoubtedly essential to control stock inputs and outputs, know which supplies are most used and which are the periods when each item is used the most. This reduces office costs.
The first step is to standardize processes. Register each material with a code and detailed description. When the product flows out, it is essential write them off.
Also keep an eye on products expiration dates and their proper storage not to lose any item.
Another tip: make an inventory. This will allow you to know all the stored products and their usage profile from inputs and outputs. In addition, it helps calculating stock costs with maintenance, losses and waste of materials.
To make a good stock control, you can chose for management systems and softwares. The entire catalog is safely stored in the cloud, easily accessible. You can track financial flow and costs with periodic reports and spreadsheets. Thus, such data-based management turns decisions more assertive.
For example, some tools allow you to view inputs by vendor and outputs by procedure types. By this, you know which materials are more used and are able to negotiate better values and payment methods for your business.
Undoubtedly, medical management systems help reduce costs in the office by automating processes, increasing productivity, centralizing data, and providing complete, intuitive and easily accessible reports for more assertive decision-making.
Reviewed by Paulo Schor, ophthalmologist, associate professor and director of innovation of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and collaborator of the Faculty of Medicine of the Albert Einstein Hospital.
Follow Phelcom blog and see tips on how to improve the management of medical offices and clinics.
Business Intelligence (BI) is a concept aimed to assisting business management from collection, management and analysis of data. Even in the healthcare area.
More and more offices, clinics, hospitals and other institutions in the sector have joined the system. Its main advantages include: information evaluated more assertively, increased productivity, optimized processes and identification of possible improvements and opportunities.
Learn how the system works, its benefits and how to install BI in healthcare.
BI in healthcare: how it works
BI collects all data from the clinic and safely stores it in a single location. This function itself is a great advantage, mainly due to the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Information analysis and decision-making – such as new actions to improve processes or correct bottlenecks – turn faster and more effective with that functionality.
In fact, the ease of integration of numerous data and the variety of specialized BI systems on the market allow more intelligence to the medical offices. This may range end-to-end: from patient consultation to daily financial balance, when integrated with already implemented medical management software.
Simple charts and reports allow widening the strategic view on the business as a whole. In BI, health can show different points of view on your management model.
You can also use BI in equipments while managing data from each patient. It allows to learn deeply about the potentialities of each device.
BI in healthcare: advantages
Learn the main benefits of using BI in healthcare:
1. Deep data analysis
Every day, your clinic generates large amounts of data, such as appointments, patient medical records, inventory entry and exit, expenses, incomes, etc. It is practically impossible to evaluate all that data manually. That’s why more and more healthcare businesses are opting for BI tools.
The system makes the data available in reports and graphs that are simple to interpret and more agile. For example, you can measure your average number of patients per day, consultation length, absences, follow-up appointment rates and patients’ healthcare plans.
The information at hand enables troubleshooting and improving processes. For example, you can identify the number of monthly absences and take actions to decrease them, such as sending appointment reminders the day before. You can also set the approximate lifetime of disposable material and request for replacements in advance.
It surely increases quality of daily activities and assures a more profitable business.
3. Preventing risks and identifying opportunities
Process optimization links directly to risk reduction. As BI applied to healthcare helps identifying business bottlenecks, you can anticipate problems that can bring serious harm and headaches. For example, the number of patients cared for decreases at certain times of the year. You can prepare your budget for that phase by predicting this scenario.
More than predicting risks, the tool also allows to identify growth opportunities. For instance, is there a constant demand for services from your clinic and a long waiting list? It may be an indication that it is time to expand business. All depends on what the other data says.
4. Higher quality management
All this naturally leads to improve the management. By showing the real situation of your business, BI in health allows you to correct errors, implement new processes, diagnose more assertively, organize routine, improve productivity, increase profitability and reduce costs. And, of course, improve the quality of patient care.
To use the tool, you need to resort to medical management systems for input data to the tool. If you still do not have it or seek for new, more complete options, you need to consider the ease of access and the organization of the information provided. Also evaluate if it provides state-of-the-art technology, cloud storage with full data security and high-quality support.
Reviewed by Paulo Schor, ophthalmologist, associate professor and director of innovation of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and collaborator of the Faculty of Medicine of the Albert Einstein Hospital.
Follow Phelcom blog and stay on top of the main news on office management!
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