PR NEWS was in Washington, D.C. to cover the Public Relations Society of America's recent healthcare conference. We bring you this story.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Americans are bolting to the Web to research new drug developments, diagnose diseases, and find support for family members battling cancer. It's probably the best PR windfall to hit the healthcare industry in ages.
Get ready for marcom in the new millennium.
In Washington, D.C., cyber entrepreneur Scott Rifkin (himself a physician) is banking on his ability to bypass the healthcare press, trade brochures and broadcast ad campaigns to promote hospitals directly to the masses. The hook drawing consumers is the chance to chat with a real doctor.
Through America'sDoctor - an anchor tenant on America Online that costs Rifkin and his private backers more than $1 million a year - Rifkin is giving AOL subscribers the opportunity to have real-time, one-on-one conversations with doctors who can provide them with downloadable medical literature, research and even news stories.
Hospitals, such as the North Carolina-based Duke University Health System, are paid sponsors whose facilities are featured on linked splash pages, though they're not directly promoted in online conversations between physicians and consulting patients.
Visitors to America'sDoctor can ask about AIDS. They can ask about apitherapy, an alternative treatment Multiple Sclerosis patients use. They can ask about the American Medical Association. The site is averaging about 3,500 chats every day (up from several hundred in the beginning), and physicians have more than 6,500 articles from which to glean information.
The AOL venture launched in September 1998 and AmericasDoctor.com premiered last month.
The Business Paradigm
Rifkin is hell bent on the idea that patients and family members will use the Internet to educate themselves, and on the slant that hospitals can promote their services without the hard sell of convincing the press to give them ink.
He's spending hours negotiating with bigwigs every week: although Rifkin won't name names, his company is in negotiations with a major East Coast healthcare network which would boost its several dozen current sponsors to more than 60. That includes the deep-pocketed Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, the first hospital system to sign up with Rifkin in October 1998.
In the first eight weeks after Ford Health joined up, it netted more than 200 referrals from America's Doctors. About 10 percent resulted in admissions.
Another sponsor, Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Milwaukee, has been a partner for just over two months and is already seeing a return.
"We've already had referrals and 42 have ended up as patients," says Mark McLaughlin, head of media relations at Froedtert.
The Business
The backbone of the service is cadre of 100-plus physicians pulling shifts around the clock in a rural Maryland call center. They are paid $60 an hour. Most are family practitioners commuting from the metropolitan Washington area. Sixty-one percent of the online visitors they chat with are women.
While the site derives some income from banner ads (ranging between $30 and $60 per thousand impressions) and could become the lead healthcare portal on Excite (negotiations are underway), Rifkin's business model goes against the grain of many other Net models, in which the advertiser is God.
Although the company won't disclose revenues, one insider said it is close to $1 million a month. Eighty percent of the site's revenues come from sponsorships, the rest from educational programs.
Glaxo-Wellcome, for instance, paid America's Doctors $30,000 to sponsor a content series about migraine headaches. To remove any slant, the project was outsourced to a neurology expert at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
Users of the chat service wait an average of 14 minutes and remain anonymous. The discussion isn't archived, and a cookie is the user's only tangible record of the discussion.
The physicians answering questions go through 14 weeks of training, most of it to ensure that they don't dispense advice (code: avoiding lawsuits) and stick to the facts while educating consumers.
The average participating hospital spends about $10,000 a month but the potential payoff from referrals who convert to patients and spend thousands on healthcare can make for good ROI.
(America's Doctor, 410/581-8949; Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital, 414/259-2618)
America'sDoctor Partner Hospitals
Bon Secours Richmond Health System -- Richmond, Va.
The Community Hospital -- Springfield, Ohio
Doylestown Hospital -- Central Pennsylvania
Duke University Health System -- North Carolina
Evanston, Northwestern Healthcare Corp.-- Evanston, Ill.
Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital/Medical College of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee, Wisc.
Good Shepherd Medical Center -- Longview, Texas
Henry Ford Health System -- Detroit
Lake Region Health System -- Fergus Falls, Minn.
Laurel Regional Hospital -- Laurel, Md.
Lehigh Valley Hospital -- Central Pennsylvania
LifeBridge Health System -- Baltimore
Memorial Health System -- Savannah, Ga.
St. Alexius Memorial Center -- Bismarck, N.D.
St. Francis Hospital -- Wilmington, Del.
St. Joseph's Hospital -- Huntingburg, Ind.
St. Luke's Episcopal Health System, Houston
St. Margaret Mercy Healthcare Centers -- Hammond, Ind.
St. Mary's Regional Medical Center -- Lewiston, Maine
State University of New York (SUNY) Health Science Center at Syracuse -- Syracuse, N.Y.
Trinity Mother Frances Health System -- Tyler, Texas
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Health System -- Pittsburgh, Pa.
University of Tennessee Medical Group -- Memphis