For doctors and private clinicians
A digital business card for doctors and private clinicians
Private work arrives by referral from other clinicians, and a referral is only as good as the routing information attached to it. If the secretary line on your card is a year old, the referral does not fail loudly. It quietly goes somewhere else.
The details that route a referral change most often
Where you consult, which days, which rooms, and which number a secretary should actually call are all moving parts. Many clinicians hold sessions at more than one address and change the mix every few months. A printed card fixes one arrangement in place, so the colleague who kept it from a meeting last year sends a patient to a clinic you no longer sit in, or leaves a message on a line nobody checks.
In the corridor after a multidisciplinary meeting
A colleague stops you to ask where you are doing private work now, because they have someone to send. Neither of you is going back to an office to find a card. A code they can scan while standing there leaves them holding your sessions, your rooms and the right number for referrals, and they can forward that link to their own secretary before the end of the day.
What it does for doctors and private clinicians
Sessions and rooms stay current
Edit the clinic addresses, the days you sit, and the number referrals should go to. Colleagues who saved the card earlier see what is true now rather than what was true when you met.
A referral that forwards cleanly
The card is a link, so a colleague can paste it into a message to their secretary or practice manager. The person who actually makes the booking gets the details first hand instead of a number read aloud.
An enquiry route that is not a clinical inbox
The form takes a name, a way to reach them and a short message, and nothing more unless you add it. Write on the card that clinical detail should not be sent through it, and reply from your inbox or pass it to your secretary.
You write every word on it
Titles, registration details and the wording your regulator expects are yours to set and yours to keep accurate. The product supplies the card, not the claims on it.
Questions doctors and private clinicians ask
- Is a web form suitable for patients describing symptoms?
- No, and the card should say so plainly. Keep the form to a name, a contact route and a line about what the enquiry concerns, and move anything clinical to a secure route your practice already uses.
- Does this hold any patient or appointment data?
- It holds the contact details you type and whatever people choose to send through the enquiry form. It is not a clinical system, it does not connect to one, and it should not be used as a record of anything.
- What about advertising rules for medical practice?
- Every word on the card is written by you, so it is governed by the same guidance as any other material you publish. Check what your regulator expects before you describe outcomes, specialisms or titles.