Free Weekly Ezine from eHealthcare Strategy & Trends

Where Is Healthcare Marketing Headed In 2020 and Beyond?

Sanjay Dholakia, Chief Marketing Officer of Marketo

In early April, the Economist Intelligence Unit released results of its latest survey of top marketing executives, The Path to 2020: Marketers Seize the Customer Experience, commissioned by marketing automation company Marketo. The report captures the insights and opinions of global marketing leaders spanning multiple industries. We followed up with Marketo’s Chief Marketing Officer Sanjay Read More

Is Your Healthcare Organization at Risk of a Cyber Attack on Your PHI?

Suni Munshani

“Massive amounts of private health information (PHI) are stored in Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) ready for analysis by those in the healthcare industry for the benefit of all,” notes Suni Munshani. “[But] the healthcare industry must find new ways to defend itself and its sensitive data from bad actors also keen to leverage the wealth Read More

Keys To Selecting the Right Technology Vendor

Greystone.net logo square

When it comes to selecting software, implementation, or design vendors for major technology upgrades such as a content management system (CMS) or customer relationship management system (CRM), there’s a lot on the line. Even small healthcare organizations may have to pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars; for larger organizations, it could be in the Read More

Online Billing Patients Love (Not Merely Tolerate)

Online billing: From the patient perspective, it seems like the best you can achieve is a silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud. But Memorial Hermann health system in Texas has implemented an online payment solution from Simplee that is garnering rave reviews. “We understand that paying a healthcare bill isn’t always pleasant, that healthcare is Read More

Messaging App Boosts Patient Satisfaction Scores to 97.5 Percent

Patrick de la Roza

Recently, eHST Editor Jane Weber Brubaker spoke with Patrick de la Roza, CEO of EASE Applications, to learn more about an application credited with raising patient satisfaction scores from 80 percent to 97.5 percent at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio. “EASE” is an acronym for Electronic Access to Surgical Events. The EASE app is essentially a secure Read More

How To Rank #1 for Cancer Care: Best Practices for Healthcare SEO

“An ever-increasing number of consumers search the Internet for medical and health information, and within healthcare, as in many industries, there is fierce competition for search traffic,” observes Marlene Kurban, a business development consultant and freelance writer with more than 20 years of experience in the behavioral healthcare field. “A targeted SEO strategy, combined with relevant, Read More

Which User Testing Tool Is Right For You?

Bill Citro, Communications and Marketing Senior Analyst at Nebraska Medicine

You’ve been working on your website redesign for many months. At key points along the way you solicited feedback from your physician committee and other stakeholders in your organization. Now you’re finally ready to let internal users test the site before the public launch. What are the right tools to use to get user feedback? Read More

Case Study: Patient Engagement is a Two-Way Street

Pamela Landis, vice president of digital engagement, Hackensack Meridian Health

Patients have high expectations for their online health care experiences these days. They expect to have the same seamless, integrated digital interaction they enjoy with Amazon Prime or Uber when they interact with their health system or provider. “Ease of mobility is what’s important to them,” says Pamela Landis, Vice President of Information Services at Read More

Why You Must Continually Improve Your Local Search Results

Adam Dorfman is Senior Vice President of Product and Technology at SIM Partners, a technology provider that optimizes location-specific content and business information to enhance local, mobile, and social search results. “Healthcare systems sometimes have thousands of physicians and hundreds of clinics and hospitals. They are very complicated systems,” says Dorfman. As healthcare organizations acquire Read More

Take Two: Improve Your Video Storytelling Skills

Joel Philippsen, Digital Marketing Coordinator at Columbus Regional Health, believes in learning from his mistakes. “Video storytelling skills are developed over time. There are a lot of variables, and regardless of how much you prepare, don’t expect to get it completely right your first time. Over the years I’ve found techniques and situations that work well Read More

Your Website Redesign Is Just the Beginning: What To Do Next

Dagmara Scalise, AVP strategic services and healthcare practice lead, Primacy

The website redesign that has utterly consumed you and your team for the past year (or more) is finally completed. What now? While you should take some time to step back and bask in your success, says Dagmara Scalise of full-service digital agency Primacy, there’s still a lot to do. “Your website is the foundation of your Read More

Fully Integrated PRM and CRM = Fully Leveraged Healthcare Marketing

Ever dream of driving a Ferrari? If you’re a health system, the equivalent is a completely tricked-out, customized, integrated technology platform that gives you all the information you need to tackle your market holistically. No more siloed B-to-B vs. B-to-C strategies. Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) is living this dream as it prepares to roll Read More

Integration and Forethought Key To Success of Digital Healthcare Initiatives

Danny Fell

“One of the most important things marketers and digital strategists can do is align their digital activities with marketing and organizational business goals,” says Daniel Fell. “But often, in the urgency to adopt these new technologies and move projects forward, good strategic thinking can take a back seat to just getting things done. That’s unfortunate Read More

Get The Most Out of Your Hospital’s Online Video Content

Allen Gottfried, Manager of Internet and Online Strategies at Saint Peter’s Healthcare System

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much more is video worth?” asks Allen Gottfried, Manager of Internet and Online Strategies at Saint Peter’s Healthcare System in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “Last year, while attending HCIC in Orlando, I had the opportunity to speak about video marketing with digital marketers from healthcare systems Read More

How To Best Leverage a Powerful (and Free) Marketing Tool

Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare Logo

Two years ago, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare launched its new website, mywheaton.org, built on Geonetric’s VitalSite CMS (content management system). One of the top priorities of the redesign was to make it easier for visitors to find physicians, choose physicians, and request appointments. “Before we redesigned our site I would say we were averaging about 50 Read More

Is Open-Source Software the Right Solution For Your Hospital, Health System, or Physician Group?

Ken Rickard

“Medicine, like science, depends on the free exchange of information to produce the best outcomes for patients,” says Ken Rickard. “Software should be designed with the same goal in mind.” Rickard is the Director of Professional Services at Chicago-based consulting and development firm Palantir.net. He believes software decisions are a crucial element of healthcare strategy. “Software Read More

Pinning = Winning for University of Utah Health Care

Are you using Pinterest as part of your healthcare marketing efforts? If not, is it because the ROI seems questionable? Jen Jenkins, a Content Manager at University of Utah Health Care, and Kelley Whalen, a Senior Marketing Manager of Marketing Development for University of Kentucky Health Care, think the return is well worth it—and they Read More

Case Studies Reveal Vital Importance of Healthcare Transparency

Northwell Health Logo

“The best way to change a culture is to be transparent,” says Emily Kagan Trenchard, Associate Vice President of Digital Strategy at Northwell Health (formerly North Shore-LIJ). “When you pull back the curtain, everyone wants to tidy up the room.” Kagan Trenchard and co-presenter Chris Boyer, Senior Vice President of ReviveHealth, shared their perspectives on Read More

#PatientExperience: Twitter Offers Valuable Insights

James Gardner

“When you think of using social media to conduct groundbreaking customer research, a hospital probably isn’t the first place you’d look,” says James A. Gardner of Connective DX. But, he points out, “Your patients are talking about you and their experience with your hospital! If you’re ready to listen to these conversations and learn from Read More

Evidence-Based Design Moves Beyond Mere Aesthetics To Drive Results

“We’re lucky enough to live in an era when design is no longer viewed as decoration,” says Emily Kagan Trenchard, Associate Vice President of Digital Marketing Strategy for Northwell Health (formerly the North Shore-LIJ Health System). But even though “[w]e understand it as a core principle that shapes our everyday interaction…that doesn’t always mean we Read More

After the New Website, What Comes Next?

With so many major changes occurring in every aspect of healthcare, health systems today are advancing into new realms and evolving new models to better serve constituents. This means that before one major project is complete, a new one is already on the drawing board. Such is the case with the digital marketing agenda of Read More

Why Orlando Health Shifted to a Patient-First Strategy

The social media budget at Orlando Health will double next year. But the health system’s social media strategy was anything but robust four years ago when Chantal Stephens came on board as Director of Marketing and Physician Sales. “Social media at the time was a very small part of the marketing story. It was a Read More

Case Study: Creating a Social Media “Command Center”

Social media has become a critical component of the digital marketing mix for most healthcare organizations. Social media command centers are making it possible for lean marketing teams to listen, respond, and engage with growing numbers of consumers on multiple platforms, and share information across the organization. Some command centers are fishbowl-style physical spaces designed Read More