The two journeys
The injured and the planning
The acute patient is usually young, often a player or a commuter who fell, and is searching late at night for the injury itself. They want to know whether you see it, how soon, and where you are. Anything longer than that is in their way.
The planned patient is usually older, searching for the operation by name, and reading alongside a son or daughter who asks harder questions than they do. They want the procedure explained, the surgeon's training, what recovery involves and what it costs, and they come back several times before calling.
The homepage serves both by splitting early: two clear doors on the first screen, each opening onto pages written at that patient's pace. The injury door ends in a slot tomorrow. The surgery door ends in a consultation request that expects a longer conversation.
The acute injury
Searches: the injury
Decides: tonight, alone
Needs: an appointment tomorrow
The planned surgery
Searches: the operation
Decides: over months, with family
Needs: explanation, costs and often a second view
Second opinions
The second opinion is a front door
Patients told they need a joint replacement or spine surgery very often look for another view before agreeing. They search for exactly that, a second opinion on knee replacement or on spine surgery, and hardly any orthopedic site has a page that answers them.
A page that does is found at the most decisive moment of the whole journey. It says what to bring, how the review works and how long it takes, and it is written without criticising the first surgeon, which reads badly to the patient and to your colleagues. The honest promise is a considered view, and that view may well agree with the first.
Reports and scans
Patients arrive holding a report
By the time someone contacts an orthopedic practice, they usually have an X-ray, an MRI report, or both. A blank message box wastes that. The enquiry form asks which imaging they already have, and where the practice has a secure way to receive files, it lets them attach the report.
The scan itself rarely uploads well, because a full MRI study is far too large for a web form. What works is the written report, plus a line asking the patient to bring the disc or films to the appointment. Without a secure upload, that line alone does the job and keeps medical records out of an ordinary inbox.
Procedure pages
Two vocabularies, two sets of pages
The two patients search in different words. The injured type what happened: ACL tear, meniscus tear, fracture, frozen shoulder. The planners type the operation: knee replacement, hip replacement, ACL reconstruction, arthroscopy, spine surgery. Each set gets pages of its own, linked across, so someone who searched for a torn ligament finds the reconstruction page when they are ready for it.
Covering both vocabularies takes a practice past the one-page build. What each size of clinic website costs is set out on its own page.
- Home
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Injuries
- ACL and meniscus tears
- Fracture care
- Knee replacement
- Hip replacement
- Arthroscopy
- Spine surgery
Recovery
Recovery is what they read most
Before an operation, patients read about recovery more than about the operation itself: how many days in hospital, when they will walk, climb stairs, drive and go back to work. Those pages are written from your own protocol and in your own words, not from generic timelines copied from elsewhere.
Recovery leads straight into rehabilitation, which is where the surgeon's pages hand over to physiotherapy. If you work with a physiotherapy team, their pages and yours link to each other, so a patient reading about week three knows who will be seeing them by then.
Outcome claims
Describe the protocol, never promise the result
Surgical marketing has one standing temptation: numbers. A near-perfect success rate, walking within a day, back to sport in six weeks. Each of those is an outcome claim, and the code doctors advertise under does not allow one, however good the figures are.
The line runs between describing and promising. Saying that physiotherapy starts the day after surgery describes how you work; saying the patient will walk the next day promises an outcome. Recovery pages written the first way are allowed, and they are also easier to believe. How India's medical advertising rules apply to surgeons is covered in our guide, and the rest of what we build for practices is on our page on websites for doctors.
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