Ask the Expert with Kathy Divis Kathy Divis is President of Greystone.Net and a member of the eHealthcare Strategy & Trends Editorial Advisory Board. In a recent presentation at the Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategies Summit, she discussed the most significant trends in healthcare marketing—and what hospitals and health systems should do now as a Read More
Getting patients engaged in their health is a priority of healthcare transformation, and the patient portal is a big part of the strategy. But the portal experience can leave you cold. Shawn Gross, Chief Digital Strategist at White Rhino shares, “I appreciate the communications I receive from my provider’s patient portal, but the interface experience Read More
Ask the Expert with Shawn Gross PwC’s healthcare group recently commented, “As patients behave more like consumers, healthcare organizations need to deliver a higher level of personalized service, satisfaction and overall experience—or risk losing business to the competition.” If you’re a healthcare marketer driven to deliver the best possible patient experience, wouldn’t you love to Read More
Late last year, Facebook announced on its blog, “Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time.” In a related post on the same day, Facebook assured businesses that, “Pages still matter — a lot,” and for emphasis, added, “In October, for instance, nearly a billion people visited Facebook Read More
Ask the Expert with Ben Dillon In a recent discussion on the SHSMD list serv, a member asked: “For those of you with more than one hospital and/or multiple facilities…are there multiple Facebook pages for each hospital or do you consolidate your Facebook presence into one location? Do you also have service line or departmental Read More
Ask The Expert with Jenny Halasz If there’s one thing as loud as the bustle of a hospital ER, it’s the cacophony of voices declaring that they finally have the secret to ranking first on Google. With a constant stream of opinion, from professionals to laypeople declaring themselves expert, it can be very difficult to Read More
Ask the Expert with Ben Dillon Health systems are complicated organizations, in large part due to constant mergers, acquisitions, and expansions. The challenge for marketers is to simplify this inherent complexity on the Web and provide consumers with a clear message. It’s been a natural choice for many health systems to create an array of Read More
Ask the Expert with Meredith Rose Many times, marketers stay so busy enhancing specific pieces of Web real estate or completing campaign-specific tasks requested by leadership, physicians, or the many other voices within organizations. These tasks can fill the days. Yet marketers have a much more focused and strategic task – building revenue for the Read More
Ask The Expert with Mark S. Gothberg There is no more important feature on a healthcare organization’s website than its doctor directory. This directory is often the critical first step for consumers to begin a relationship with a physician and develop a long-term association with a health system. For the millions of newly insured Americans Read More
Ask The Expert with Daniel Fell Recently, my 91-year-old father voiced considerable frustration about changes in his insurance plan. Rather than presenting changes in a clear, concise manner, the plan used language that only confused him more and forced him to spend hours on the phone talking to customer service representatives. At the time, I Read More
Ask The Expert with Ben Dillon With the growing number of ways that consumers access the Internet, responsive design is fast becoming the industry standard for hospital websites. Responsive design enables websites to adapt to the device being used, presenting an optimal experience on smartphones, tablets, and desktops. Research by Geonetric, an online solutions company, Read More
Ask The Expert with Daniel E. Ansel A daughter stops by her mother’s house on her way to work and finds her mom unable to get up and that her speech is slurred. She’s had a stroke. A young wife and her husband are enjoying a vacation, and he suffers a brain aneurysm. In an Read More
Ask The Experts with Mark Gothberg and Michele Von Dambrowski We have covered strategic marketing and business development subjects for nearly 30 years – with an added focus on Web and digital communications since 1999. A lot has changed during this time, but we have observed recurring issues that have limited the effectiveness of marketers, Read More
Ask The Expert with Ted Balowski With the healthcare Web environment rapidly changing, new technologies are constantly emerging and are being adopted in varying degrees by demographic target groups. Now, four generations have unprecedented access to healthcare information and the providers that deliver it. According to a 2013 survey by Econsultancy, four in 10 global Read More
Ask The Expert with Mark S. Gothberg Winners of the 2013 eHealthcare Leadership Awards, the competition’s 14th year, were recognized in November in New Orleans during a presentation at a healthcare Internet conference sponsored by Atlanta-based Greystone.Net. The November issue of eHealthcare Strategy & Trends listed the winners. Last month’s “Ask the Expert” column discussed Read More
Ask The Expert with Mark S. Gothberg Key provisions of the Affordable Care Act will be in full force on January 1 – less than two months away. Millions of newly insured consumers will be seeking health services, with many of them having limited knowledge of how the healthcare system works or the providers serving Read More
Ask The Expert with Susan Solomon Eleven years ago, Kay Franks, marketing manager for St. Louis Children’s Hospital, got wind that budget reductions were on the horizon and it looked like her website budget was on the chopping block. That was all she needed to get cracking on building a comprehensive dashboard to demonstrate the Read More
Ask The Expert with Rachelle Montano While eight in 10 consumers say they go online in search of health information, a hospital website is usually not their first destination. That’s why you need to do everything you can to get them to come to you with their health questions. Having a robust health content library Read More
Ask The Expert with Mike Reinhardt Arguments are made regularly that a brand is an organization’s most valuable asset. A chief marketing officer of Coca-Cola once said that if the company lost all of its facilities and people, he could rebuild the company – provided he retained the rights to the brand. He said he Read More
Ask The Expert with Scott McRae Calculating return on investment for a service-line marketing campaign can be elusive and is not for the faint of heart. However, demonstrating that your marketing efforts contribute to your organization’s bottom line communicates the value of your function and benefits your career. Where to begin To demonstrate the calculation Read More
Ask The Expert with Jeremy Dietz For many years, print publications have served as one of a hospital marketer’s best communications tools. Despite the rise of digital media, that hasn’t changed. Print publications are still a highly effective way to deliver information to your entire community on your schedule. But your print efforts shouldn’t stand Read More
// Ask The Expert with Daniel E. Ansel // It’s a commonly accepted maxim that it costs five times more to recruit a new customer than to retain a satisfied one, yet when I ask hospitals and health systems if they’re concerned or think about tracking the “lifetime value” of a patient, they usually don’t Read More
Ask The Expert with Ben Dillon Content management is one of the most difficult – and most overlooked – pieces of Web development. The average hospital website comprises more than 1,500 pages of unique content. Creating and maintaining all that content requires more work than most administrators can easily manage, especially if they lack full-time Read More
Ask The Expert with Daniel Fell On balance, most hospital system websites are consumer-oriented, meaning the content and its presentation are organized to appeal to patients and potential patients. Although some sites have links to unique content for other user audiences such as employees and healthcare professionals – and a few even utilize prominent tabs Read More
Ask the Expert with Kyra Hagan The healthcare market is changing profoundly. With masses of baby boomers entering retirement, the United States faces one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in its history. The burdens associated with caring for a large and aging population are increasing both the complexity and cost of care delivery. In Read More