Finding specialists made easier

14 Jun 2021

Designed in consultation with patients, GPs and specialist doctors, the new search enables website users to search by more specific sub-specialty terms, for example orthopaedic surgeons who specialise in knee replacements or urologists that use robotic assisted surgical techniques.

With thousands of accredited specialists that work at each of our hospitals across Australia, developing a single platform to showcase them was a complex task but improvements made to the website will ensure that specialist profiles are easier to find and contain relevant information that patients and GPs need. 

Enhancements to Find a Specialist include:

• Addition of sub-specialty and special interest information
• Inclusion of additional consulting locations
• Option to search by consulting locations close to me
• Addition of telehealth, paediatric consultation and no-gap provider information 
• Inclusion of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) IDs to help GPs make secure referrals
• Enhanced filtering capabilities in search
• Improved design
• Search engine optimisation (SEO).

Group Senior Marketing Manager Colin Wood said:

"Ultimately we wanted to make finding the right specialist for a patient’s needs easier. Whether it is the patient themselves, a family member or a referring GP, the more comprehensive information they have on specialist doctor, the more empowered they are in their healthcare journey.

"Improving Find a Specialist aligns closely to our strategic objective of excellence in patient experience as most people use the internet to find key information relating to the treatment they may need.

"The demand for telehealth has certainly increased as a result of COVID-19 so it is helpful that you can now easily find out which of our specialists provide telehealth consulting on the website.

"This has been one of the most visited parts of our website, accounting for 20% of all pages viewed on the site so it has been important to ensure we continually develop its utility.

"More than 1,400 VMOs across all of our hospitals were consulted to update their profiles with more accurate and up to date informationand we thank caregivers across the organisation that have supported it."

Find a specialist launched on 31 March 2021 and you can view the new site here: www.sjog.org.au/specialists