Marketing Inspiration

A Doctor Who Only Makes House Calls

Dr. Jay Parkinson's Web site is stylish enough to belong to an ad agency or a media start-up rather than a general practitioner. Then again, Parkinson isn't like your average family doctor.

For starters, he only makes house calls. Each visit costs around $200, and he stays for as long as he's needed, not the five or ten minutes you're allotted in a traditional office. Also—hold onto your hats—he's easy to reach. On the site, he displays his mobile phone number, his email address and a quartet of IM addresses.

In another shocking twist, Parkinson demystifies the process of diagnosis and treatment, using hypothetical situations like falling on your wrist in the park. You could go to an emergency room for a seven-hour visit and a $2,000 bill, writes Parkinson, or you can call him to do the following:

• Based on a phone conversation, he suspects your wrist is broken. He sends you to nearby radiologist, who charges $80 for an x-ray.


• Your wrist is broken. The radiologist emails the x-ray to Parkinson, who directs you to an orthopedist in the neighborhood who can see you in an hour and charges $400 to cast your arm.

Parkinson's summation: You've saved $1,520 and five hours of your day. "But say your wrist wasn't broken," he concludes. "It was simply sprained. You only spent $80. I then tell you what to do about that sprained wrist."

By making convenience, transparency and value the central thrust of his unconventional practice, Dr. Parkinson makes himself virtually irresistible to his target audience. And we'd say that's a healthy dose of Marketing Inspiration.