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
St. Louis Children’s Hospital was an early adopter of mobile apps. Kid Care, its first app, launched more than six years ago as a symptom checker for parents. “Back in January 2010 it was just cool to have an app,” says John Odom, Webmaster at St. Louis Children’s. “But as we thought about it over Read More
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
“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
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
“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
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
“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
“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
“A complete redesign and development of your website can be a daunting process for any size organization, and the challenges posed may be wide-ranging,” says Chris Behan, President and Founder of Socius Marketing in Tampa, FL. “If all goes well, there is much to gain, and organizations can move forward rapidly. But more often than Read More
“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
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
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
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
Scott Mowery, Director of Digital Services at Cleveland Clinic, presented at HCIC 2015. He used to work at American Greetings Interactive, and his background in e-commerce intrigued us. According to Scott, there’s a lot of overlap between e-commerce and healthcare marketing: “At American Greetings [my whole job was about] seeing how many subscribers turned into paying Read More
In early 2015, we spoke with Sheree Esser, Consumer Engagement Marketing Manager at Trinity Health, about a planned marketing automation pilot at Saint Alphonsus in Boise, Idaho. We recently followed up with Esser to find out the results of the pilot. The first step was to make sure the email list was deliverable, and that Read More
Sixty-six percent of respondents to Nielsen’s 2015 Global Trust in Advertising survey say they trust consumer opinions posted online. Reviews are the third-most-trusted source, after recommendations from friends and family (83 percent), and branded websites (70 percent). Yet Pew Research statistics indicate that only 3 to 4 percent of consumers write online reviews of treatments, hospitals, Read More
To say that the past couple of years at Nebraska Medicine have been a busy time would be an understatement. As if launching a new name and brand weren’t enough, Nebraska Medicine completed the clinical integration of three separate entities into one operating unit, all while dealing with the international press as one of three Read More