Ask a clinic receptionist what she says all day and it comes down to three sentences. Doctor sits from six to nine. Not on Thursday. The second clinic is above the medical store, first floor.
That is most of the call volume in a small practice. None of it is medical. All of it is information a patient could have read on a phone before dialling, if there had been anywhere to read it.
A prescription pad carries your name and one address. A digital card can carry the rest, and it can change on the day you change your timings rather than at the next print run.
What actually belongs on a doctor card
- • Your name and qualification, spelled the way you want it to sit in a patient phonebook.
- • Speciality in plain language. Skin doctor next to Dermatologist, because families search in both.
- • Each clinic with its own timings and its own days.
- • A pinned location, so an elderly patient can open directions instead of asking for landmarks.
- • The clinic number for appointments, kept separate from your personal mobile.
- • Registration number and hospital attachments, for the patients who check.
Notice what is not on that list. No treatment claims and no promises about outcomes. A card is for being found, not for advertising results.
Two clinics, two sets of timings, one link
The commonest layout in Indian practice is a morning at a hospital and an evening at your own place, or two clinics in two neighbourhoods on alternate days. Paper handles this badly. You either print two pads or you cram both onto one line nobody can parse.
| Morning clinic | Address, days and hours, with its own phone number if the desk is different. |
|---|---|
| Evening clinic | The same again. Patients read the one nearest them and ignore the other. |
| Weekly off | State it plainly. This one line removes a surprising number of calls. |
| Holiday changes | Edit the page the day you decide. The link and the QR code do not change. |
That last row is the real gain. A conference next month, a family wedding, a shifted Saturday. You edit once and every patient who saved your link sees it.
Keep your personal number out of it
This is the part doctors ask about first and it deserves a straight answer. Your personal card page on Ahoyy is deliberately kept out of search results. It is a page you share by link or by QR code with people you choose, not a listing anybody can pull up by typing your name into Google.
A card can also carry more than one number, so the number on the page can be the clinic desk while your own mobile stays off it entirely. Patients get an answer and you get your evening.
A doctor sharing a link is not the same as a doctor publishing a phone number. One is a handover. The other is a permanent exposure.
If you do want a findable public listing for the clinic, that is a separate business page you switch on yourself. It stays off until you decide otherwise.
Make a card that carries your clinic timings and locations, and edit it the day they change.
Make a free cardWhere to put the QR code inside a clinic
- 1. On the reception desk, facing the patient chair. It is the highest traffic surface you own.
- 2. On the back of the prescription slip, so it goes home with every patient.
- 3. On the waiting room noticeboard, beside the timings you already put there.
- 4. On the clinic door, so someone who came on your off day can still save you.
- 5. On the referral slip you hand over when you send a patient to a specialist.
The door is the one people forget. A patient who arrives on a Thursday to a closed clinic is annoyed and has nothing to do about it. A QR on the door turns that wasted trip into a saved contact and a return visit.
The other half of the problem, your own contacts
Doctors collect cards constantly. Medical representatives, lab owners, physiotherapists, equipment vendors, the plumber for the clinic, colleagues from a conference. They pile up in a drawer and get consulted never.
The same app reads those cards from a photo, so the drawer turns into a searchable list. You can add a note to each one and record where you met, which is often the only thing that makes a conference contact useful a year later.
Two habits make this worth doing. Scan the card the same day, because a card scanned three weeks later carries no memory with it. And write the note in the words you would actually use to search. Ortho referral Kalyan is a better note than Dr Sharma, orthopaedic surgeon, which is already printed on the card.
It matters more for a practice than for most trades, because a doctor refers patients out constantly. When a patient needs a physiotherapist near their home, being able to search your own contacts by area rather than by half remembered name is the difference between a real referral and a vague suggestion to look one up.
What it costs
The card, the QR code, WhatsApp sharing and card scanning are free. Ahoyy charges for revealing verified business contacts from the directory in volume, at ₹199 for 25 reveals or ₹299 and ₹799 a month. A clinic setting up its card and its QR code pays nothing.
Start with one clinic, one set of timings and one QR code on the reception desk. Add the second clinic once the first one is working.