The same conditions and responsibilities that apply to creating business services in the real world apply to the virtual world. Don't create gratuitous offers of resources, such as a monthly newsletter, and fail to follow through. Contact information can be supplied for your practice, but don't stop at simply providing a phone number. Provide them with tools making it easy for them to find you. This is simple to do and provides a convenience for patients.
Patient education is an important part of any practice.
The Web makes distributing this type of information incredibly easy and allows the incorporation of multimedia elements into the materials that can dramatically enhance the level of understanding by the patient of their condition. Every piece of information which you provide to patients and expect them to fill out can be provided as downloadable printable forms that patients can fill out before they arrive. Perhaps the more adventurous can even provide interactive resources that can be filled out online and emailed to your staff prior to the visit. Intranets were developed to make intra-organizational communication more efficient and to provide a central repository for all the information resources that an organization needs to carry on business. Your practice and staff has its own information needs and providing this tool for staff communication and information sharing can have dramatic effects on productivity - once the staff is comfortable with its use.