Wednesday, January 23, 2013
With the name Advance Orthodontics on the front door, it’s not much of a surprise that Dr. John Karotkin likes to keep his practice on the cutting edge.
From the imaging and other technologies he employs for clinical treatment to the systems he has set up for patient communications, his practice is not shy about adopting new things. Now the practice is also pioneering its own new developments, as Dr. Karotkin recently launched a custom designed Free Online Consultation Tool as a part of his practice website.
Born after he scrapped plans for developing a custom mobile app, his latest innovation is was something he dreamed up that his webmaster built in just a few days. Designed as a way to bring his practice into contact with prospective patients, the tool is simple for patients and doesn’t require a large chunk of Dr. Karotkin’s time.
“I feel that by making it this quick and easy, and answering their questions, I can get people excited enough that they will come in and schedule an appointment,” he said.
To request a free consultation through the website, a prospective patient enters basic contact information, uploads between 4 and 7 images of his or her teeth taken from specific angles and fills in a brief description of what they want to know about their possible orthodontic needs. The webpage displays sample images of the views Dr. Karotkin is looking for to make sure patients provide him with usable visuals.
Once he’s reviewed a patient’s submission, Dr. Karotkin does his best to answer the questions, and in order to keep everything compliant with HIPAA, the responses are sent via encrypted PDF that the patients can only access with a password. The online consultation service has been live for a couple weeks, and Dr. Karotkin said he’s encouraged by the first handful of submissions.
“I was a little bit dubious in putting this thing up,” he said. “I thought people are not going to show me what I need to see to really give them any details and information. But surprisingly, with the cases I’ve seen so far, the pictures were good enough and the questions were good enough to where I could actually give them somewhat valuable information.”
To truly determine a diagnosis and course of treatment, of course Dr. Karotkin would need to perform a firsthand exam and have a full medical history of the patient. But through this site he’s able to provide basic answers to people who he hopes will come to him for care. The submitted photos are easily able to show him what he needs to explain to a patient about crowding or gaps and to inform them of some possible corrective options his practice could provide.
“The idea is I want to pique the interest of those patients who might not otherwise take the initiative to actually call and schedule an orthodontic appointment,” he said.
To that end, his practice follows up on the responses they send to see if they can get these prospective patients to book an appointment for in-person follow-up. Because the system is online, Dr. Karotkin understands he might receive questions from people around the globe who might find a local orthodontist to provide care. Still he believes the service is a useful tool for his practice and a perfect fit for his cutting edge image.
The program is just getting started at Advance Orthodontics, so Dr. Karotkin is not sure if it will become a big practice building success or just one extra service he has to offer. Either way, he said it’s been exciting to see how quickly his idea has been turned into a real, innovative feature of his practice website.
“As far as I know this feature is unique to us at this point in time,” he said. “This is a very easy thing to do, so if it’s successful, I’m sure there will be copycats.”