We have yet another interesting statistic that is important for the dental industry. The same study that we have been pulling stats from recently come from the February-March 2007 survey held by Pew Internet Stats. You can learn more about these surveys by going to www.pewinternet.org. This site is a terrific internet resource and we highly recommend it for any of your internet studies. This survey states that 71% of all American adults actively use the internet. The interesting fact that they released that we are highlighting today is how many of those users look for health and medical info online.

According to the survey, 80% of all American internet users claim to use the internet to help find health and medical information. Most people who we have shared this stat with have been very surprised by how high the percentage is. Websites such as “WebMD” have become valuable resources for almost every home in America.

What in the world does this have to do with Dentistry you might ask? Let’s analyze it for just a bit. These internet users are apparently looking for health information with respected and legitimate sources. Websites like “WebMD” are filled with articles written by proffessionals to help give the correct info to the readers. This is a perfect opportunity for a Dental Office! Think about it!

What if every dental office in the United States had a website, and on that website there was a patient education portal. This “portal” could provide article upon article, link upon link, and resource upon resource to help educate patients of a particular Dentist. It’s genius! Now, you educate your patients and give them what they are looking for. It’s a great combination. So in case you are wondering, a patient education portal is one of the tools that PatientDocs.com provides to it’s customers. We will build a website for a Dental Practice, and on that website is a Patient Education section for all their articles and resources.

An article posted in jada.ada.org entitled “Is The Internet Useful For Clinical Practice?“, several writers got together to write about the subject of Internet and how it is used in the dental industry. The article is basic and simply pulls information from a survey that was completed years ago. The numbers that were put together are striking. The authors sent a 25-question survey to 455 subscribers to the Internet Dental Forum. These subscribers we are talking about are of course dentists. The dentists were to respond to the survey either by email or by a specific web page. They had a 72 percent response rate on the survey. Of the 314 surveys they received, 98 percent of respondents used the internet at home, and 68 percent used the internet in their office. Only 5 percent used the internet in the treatment area.

The primary reason for these dentists using the internet was “to keep up in general, followed by to answer patient-specific questions and to provide patient education. Reduction of professional isolation was one of the most frequently cited advantages of using the Internet”. The article went on to say in conclusion, “The authors found that some dentists use the Internet to support clinical practice and that it helped dentists adopt new techniques for patient treatment and obtain information on new materials or products.”

A very interesting response came from this survey. A new and innovative way of thinking for dental practices nationwide has emerged. Using the internet as a way of “Patient Education” for your practice. It’s genius! Think about it! Every dental practice in America should have a website. And on that website there is a knowledge base for their patients. A knowledge base to answer questions and receive information continually that will help them. You can even take it a step further and send out a small portion of this knowledge base each month as an emailed newsletter. What a terrific way to educate your patient and achieve a higher level of customer service.

PatientDocs.com builds websites for the dental industry. We help you build a web presence that focuses on “Patient Education” to create this knowledge base that we are talking about. We get you setup with a custom website that has a “Patient Education” page where your patients can visit often and find answers to their questions. It’s a wonderful way to get connected on the web. By doing this you take better care of your existing patients and get more patients at the same time. Click Here to learn more about PatientDocs.com and the services we provide.