You’ve gone through the tedious process of looking for the doctor that fits with your practice’s culture. Finally, you’ve found the perfect candidate.

Their start date is approaching sooner than expected, which is exciting. Of course, you’ve already jumped through all of the hoops involved with hiring someone in advance of their first day. Now you’re in the midst of racking your brain through all of the different activities involved with making them feel welcomed.

You’re ready to go. What else could you possibly do?

Well, we live in a time where people have immediate, unlimited access to constant communication.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what industry an organization serves, their customers want to hear from them. To prove my point, 88% of organizations use social media in some capacity. The majority of a company’s time spent on social media is to stay in contact with their clientbase.

The point I’m trying to make is that even after you’ve prepared your new team member’s office, printed out all necessary legal hiring paperwork, and started planning what they’re first week will look like you’re still not done.

You have to announce your newest doctor to the world. But how?

Prepare Biographical Information

The process of announcing your new doctor starts before they’ve come in for their first day.

Specifically, it starts right after they signed their offer letter.

After they’ve confirmed their interest in working at your practice, you’ll send them your employee manual and policy handbook. If you’re like most healthcare organizations they’ll have to review these documents, initial each page, sign that they acknowledge all of the information and send it back to you.

This process is pretty standard across industries, it’s how hiring works. We already know this.

However, this is also the perfect opportunity to ask your new doctor to send you biographical information.

Biographical information is imperative to have on hand while you’re preparing a hiring announcement.

Getting this information is so important because it’s content you can draw from for every version of your announcement. Without it, you’ll only have a few bullet points to draw from that don’t tell your patients much of anything about your new hire.

With it, you’ll have a narrative that gives specific background information about who your new doctor really is including…

Where they’re from
Where they got their medical license
What they specialize in
What they do in their spare time
Any fun facts they have about themself

To put it plainly, asking for biographical information helps humanize your newest doctor.

When your patients know a little bit about your newest medical professional before meeting them, they’re less likely to have anxiety when seeing them for the first time.

After all, we know that White Coat Syndrome exists. The last thing we want is for your patients to avoid your new practice member because they’re not familiar with them.

Write a Press Release

One of the oldest ways to announce any big changes at an organization is to write a press release. They’re written with one goal in mind, to reach the eyes of journalists.

What better way to announce your new team member then through an official document that has the chance to grab paper headlines?

Maybe you’re a small, local practice. You want to grow your patient volume, but steady enough so that you can handle it. You can only handle so much patient volume at one time. In this case, is writing a press release a risk? No.

I do want to break it to you but your press release announcement isn’t going to land on your local news station’s biggest stories of the week. Sure, it’s a big deal that you’re bringing on a new person to your practice. However, news outlets usually have a few other pressing stories that will grab more viewers.

But that doesn’t mean you should ignore writing a press release altogether.

This type of announcement is an “official” document coming directly from your practice in a formal structure. Furthermore, there are distribution services that will push your press release to media outlets to spread the word about your latest team member. They give you the freedom to write the story you want and host it on news websites across the country for a nominal fee.

Some practices already write press releases about their new physician hires.

Beverly Hospital Group has an entire section on their website devoted to archiving their press releases. Not all of them are announcing a new doctor in their network but it’s a great example of what you can do with your own press releases.

Of course, they do have a new doctor announcement press release within their archive. It welcomes Karen Damico, D.O. to Amy Esdale Primary Care at Addison Gilbert Hospital.

First, its introductory paragraph contains the gist of the announcement. Next, the second paragraph gives first-hand context from the team via an added quote that expresses excitement. Followed by a couple of other paragraphs that give background information I keep stressing the importance of throughout this blog post.

Press releases aren’t hard to write, act as a formal announcement and have the chance to garner the attention of local media. They aren’t something you should pass up on.

90% of adults use social media to search for healthcare information.

In other words, they want to communicate with your practice since you’re the expert.

So, after you’ve established your practice’s social media policy, you can start answering the questions they have online.

Eventually, you’ll hire another physician on your team. When this happens, you can use your social media platform as another way to share your announcement.

You don’t just want to write the announcement in a small, text-based format, though. Photos and graphics on social media receive almost 40% more engagement than other formats.

So, in order for your new doctor announcement to get the most traction on social media, turn it into a graphic.

You don’t need to be a professional digital designer to create a nice looking graphic, either. If you use a service like Canva you’ll be able to make something in a few minutes that looks great.

But what do you include in your graphic?

Cairns Doctors does a fantastic job of announcing their new team members on social media. Their image above is simple. It has a picture of the doctor, introduces their background, and prompts the reader to schedule an appointment with them.

There’s not much to this image, yet it gets its point across without being overly verbose.

You don’t want to include too much information in your post, otherwise people won’t read it at all.

Of course, they also include some text in their post.

The text within the post itself shouldn’t be a direct replica of the text within your announcement image. Instead, summarize what it says and add some humor to go along with it.

When you’re already active on social media, it makes sense to announce your new doctor on your account as well.

If you aren’t active yet, a new member joining your team is the perfect opportunity to start on social media.

Send a Postcard

I know what you’re thinking, “Mail is going by the wayside. Why should I send a postcard announcement to my patients?”

Depending on your patient demographic, sending your new doctor announcement through the mail might be the best option. People between the ages of 45 and 54 are most likely to respond to direct mail.

You can determine whether or not sending a postcard is an effective way to announce your new doctor based on that statistic alone. If your practice specializes in geriatrics, this is a great option for you.

Conversely, if you run an OB-GYN that mainly sees pregnant women then your patient age group most likely falls outside of the one I just mentioned. Thus, you can skip this announcement option.

Designing your postcard is a lot like creating your social media post, except you can use both sides and you have to leave an area for postal information.

Of course, we’re going to look at an example. Atlanta West Dermatology announced the joining of Dr. Catherine Warner in 2018 as a postcard. They used an external organization to design their postcard and it came out stunning.

Of course, the front side shows a picture of Dr. Warner with the announcement. The backside gives more information about the new doctor.

You may think sending a postcard is an outdated practice. However, it's another option available to you when you’re announcing your newest doctor that might resonate with your patients more than you might think.

Upload an Interview Video

72% of modern-day consumers prefer video content over reading or other visuals.

That statistic alone explains the explosive popularity of video-based social media platforms like TikTok.

However, it also means that it’s an avenue you should explore when announcing your newest doctor.

It doesn’t have to be anything heavily edited or over-the-top with special effects. Host a simple sitdown interview with your new employee in a well-lit area, ask them questions about themself and record it.

You don’t need top of the line equipment or editing software for a video as simple as this. Your phone, a tripod, bright overhead lights and the software that came with your laptop will come out better than you think.

What’s most important with a video announcement is the questions you ask and how you edit the final product.

You’ll want to ask similar questions that I mentioned in the first section of this blog post. In other words, prompt them to go into detail about their background and who they are.

As far as formatting goes, there is one particular format that stands out. To paint a better picture let’s look at an example of a healthcare organization that is already making video announcements.

Our example comes from Annville Family Medicine’s video welcoming Dr. Sisbarro to their practice. This is a great example because of how professionally done it looks. However, it’s format isn’t out of reach if you aren’t familiar with video creation.

This is still in a sit-down interview format but the interviewer is sitting off-camera. They also took “action” shots of Dr. Sisbarro walking through the halls of the practice and going into rooms. The result is a professional-quality video where the new doctor looks like she’s talking directly to the viewer, introducing herself to her future clients.

Realistically speaking, making a video that introduces your new doctor to your patients is the best form of an announcement you can create. First, they’ll have to be physically at your office. This means that their orientation already happened. Second, to make this video as authentic as possible, they’ll have to be in their uniform. Third, think about it, they’ll have to get settled in at your practice for a couple of weeks before they’ll be comfortable enough to sit in front of a camera.

Although it’s the last medium to announce your newest doctor on, it’s the most effective since your patients will be able to virtually “meet” them without having to come into your office.

Conclusion

There’s no one perfect way to announce your newest doctor. Instead, your best option is to choose the channels that will resonate best with your patients and pursue each of them. That way you’re ensuring that the most people possible will see that you’ve brought a new physician on board.

If you’re hiring a new doctor and want to announce it, ensure that you get their background information. That way, you can translate it to whichever channel you want.

When you hire a new physician, it’s exciting. You’ve gone through the long hiring process and found the perfect candidate for your practice.

So why not share your excitement with your patients and the social web through an announcement?