Proposal to Harness the Power of VasWeb for Your Own Vasectomy Practice
Dear Fellow Vasectomist,
Nearly
10 years ago, after 20 years of in-office
vasectomy consultations, I developed within my vasectomy website the
ability to expedite the
consultation process
by doing it
online. Through a rather thorough
vasectomy
information page
and a
counseling video
, I conveyed to prospective vasectomy patients
all they needed to know about vasectomy. And through an
online registration process developed and
refined over the past ten years, I acquired all that I needed to know
about most patients, at the same time forming a database of all patients
(that could be sorted and filtered) with very little input from my own
staff. Using the power of the database and mailmerge, I also developed
a program that would print (1)
Customized Letters
to the PCPs and OB/GYNs of couples who choose vasectomy, (2)
Thank You Notes to referral sources, (3)
Receipts, and (4)
Insurance
Claim Forms
.
Given its longevity, breadth of information and frequent enhancements,
VasWeb has also earned a
high position in search engines
even outside my own service areas in peninsular Florida.
As I get older, I think
what a shame it would be
to lose this fine program
when I retire.
So over the past year,
VasWeb has been expanded
from a single-user platform to
a system designed
for multiple users
, called VasWeb Vasectomy Doctors, utilizing
the URL
VasWebDoctors. Any vasectomist is
free to design his or her own program. But
partnering
with VasWebDoctors may be much more cost-effective
. Why reinvent
the wheel if you don't have to?
I am also very
dedicated to the good reputation of
vasectomy
, and would like to offer VasWebDoctors to vasectomy
practices with high standards of user-friendliness, technical skill
(no pain, recognition of AUA Guidelines, low failure and complication
rates), and caring follow-up. No one is better able to judge the vasectomy
experience than the patients themselves.
Patient
reviews
of each of us will provide future patients with the confidence
to proceed with highly rated vasectomy practices and the guidance to
steer clear of practices with marginal reviews. However, we will offer
helpful advice to those practices with marginal reviews in hopes of
improving their customer satisfaction ratings and the reputation of
vasectomy in their areas.
During the VasWeb Expansion process, colleague and excellent vasectomist
Dr. Don Snyder in Indianapolis has offered valuable advice as VasWebDoctors's
"test doctor". Together, we have tried to make VasWebDoctors user friendly
for both vasectomy clients and participating doctors.
When men considering vasectomy are referred to VasWebDoctors (by search
engines, friends, or advertising), they arrive at a home page which looks
like this:
The "Information for Providers" is what you are reading now. If you open
VasWebDoctors
in a second browser window, you can read along in this window while playing
on the site in another, toggling back and forth between the two windows
with ctrl-tab if you are using a PC. First, click on any teardrop to open a box with
a reference to that vasectomy practice. If you click on the teardrop in
Indiana ...
... Don Snyder's practice pops up. The box also contains an average rating
of his office. Clicking on the stars provides ratings details and comments
from patients. The box also contains a link to his practice website.
If the patient likes what he sees in Dr. Snyder's website, he is
directed by Don's website or his office staff to go to his Home Page and click on the link to the VasWebDoctors
Online Registration page. Here are the home pages of my site
with the
Online Registration link in
green ...
... and Don's site with the
Online
Registration
link in blue:
Again, notice the links to
"Online Registration".
Clicking on that link brings the patient to a registration page customized
by the doctor for his own practice. Feel free to experience the process
by registering with my practice as Test Test through the Green Link at
my home page. The process involves
paying a deposit if the doctor customizes his
registration to include a deposit. The deposit goes into the doctor's PayPal
account, a process easy to set up for doctors who might like to join VasWebDoctors.
As a final step, the patient opts in or out of an opportunity to receive
and respond to an e-mail (one month after his vasectomy) that provides a
link to a quick rating of his vasectomy experience. These
ratings provide the data from which the
doctor's average rating is compiled, and the comments given
voluntarily by some patients provide a personal touch.
My developer and I have even arranged
for the a focused ratings map to be embedded into my personal home page:
Clicking on any teardrop brings up a box with a link to the page for the
site and the average star ratings of the site. Clicking on the stars opens
the ratings page for that site within VasWebDoctors.com. This increases
the traffic to VasWebDoctors.com, which enhances to position of VasWebDoctors.com
on search engines, which benefits all VasWebDoctors. Such a sub-map can
be built into any web page of any VasWebDoctor.
That is all that you can see online for now. We call everything so far the
"Front End":
(1) the VasWebDoctors Home Page, (2) the doctor's own
website, and (3) the Registration page. Now I will show you the
"Back End", secure elements that can be seen only
by participating doctors and their staffs when they "Log On".
Here is what VasWebDoctors Log-In looks like:
Online Registrations go to a
"Holding Area" ...
... where they are listed ...
Upon clicking "Review", a patient's data presents
itself on a single sheet.
The registration process provides insurance information
if applicable, expediting the process of getting that data to confirm insurance
coverage. The patient is called to discuss appointment availability, to
assign an appointment time, and to acquire payment information (cash, check,
CC, insurance, or Title 10). Once the appointment is assigned, the registration
is printed for use on the day of the vasectomy, and "Approved" for transfer
to the
"Main Database"
of all patients. By signing the printed copy, the patient acknowledges the
accuracy of the data provided.
Individual records or groups of records can be pulled
from this large
"Main Database"
by name, date of procedure, age, zip code, or any combination of many sorting
parameters.
"Letters and Forms"
can be generated from the data in each patient record. These might include
Insurance Claim Forms
,
Thank You Letters
to referring physicians, and postal
Letters
to Patients
, such as semen reminders and
surveys for research purposes.
To reiterate and summarize:
On the
FRONT END: VasWebDoctors.com becomes
a
map-based directory of VasWebDoctors Partners
with links to their websites and ratings of their practices. VasWebDoctors
also provides a
Registration process which (1)
enables patients to provide
data before
their visits without need for staff to read sloppy handwriting and re-enter
that data into their own electronic files, (2) enables doctors to accept
appointment deposits to minimize no-show
rates, and (3) offers patients a
ratings and comments
opportunity to showcase user-friendly practices and help less friendly practices
improve. Thirty days after their vasectomies, the program automatically
sends an e-mail to those patients who, during registration, checked a box
signifying a willingness to answer a survey. Those 1-5 ratings in 5 categories
are tabulated to provide an average for each category, then an overall average.
The overall average is displayed within the pop-up box of each VasWebDoctor
location
then the visitor can see the details of the 5 categories:
Within the Doctor's website, the Doctor may include links to information
and videos about vasectomy in his or her own website, or links back to any
of the information in my site (VasWeb.com), including my counseling video,
with an explanation that the Doctor performs vasectomy using a technique
very similar to that of Dr. Stein. If the prospective patient decides to
proceed, he clicks a link on the Doctor's website for an online vasectomy
registration specific for that Partner. He then
Registers Online
, providing a credit card deposit if the doctor requires
one. Deposits go into the Doctor's PayPal Account (easy to set up and we
provide the instructions) and can be transfered to his or her bank account.
On the
BACK END, the Doctor designates Users within
his or her office to have access to the registration records submitted by
patients to the Holding Area ("Review Online Patient Data") of his or her
practice.
These records are invisible to other Doctors. A User within that practice
can review the record, edit the record, call the patient to assign an appointment
date and time (for consultation, vasectomy or both), print the record, and
then transfer the electronic record to the existing database of all records
of that practice ("Find Patient"). Those records can be sorted and filtered
just like the records of any database. The Doctor can also prepare template
referral letters or forms ("Letters and Forms") into which the data of any
record can be merged. He or she can also Edit Office Information, Providers,
and Users with access to his or her online data. If the Doctor requires
a deposit, it can be applied toward his or her fee for the consultation
or vasectomy. If the vasectomy is covered by insurance, part of the deposit
can cover the copay and the rest refunded to the patient's credit card account
via PayPal within 60 days or by refund check after 60 days..
Proposal:Together, Dr. Snyder and I
have decided that the
fee for the first 10 practices
that join VasWeb will be
$1200 for the first year
($100 per month), payable at signup, but refundable prorated if requested.
We don't know if rates will change, but we certainly do not want to lose
Partners because the greater the number of Partners, the better for all
of us. If interested, please contact me using the form below. Please provide
either a phone number or e-mail address: