Getting lost is no fun. Getting lost when you’re already under a lot of stress is even worse. “Usually people are here because of a life-changing event and more often than not it is not a positive life-changing event, so it is a very stressful situation,” says Peter Haigney, Director of Public Relations at Robert Read More
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and the National Institutes of Health adopt Connexient’s wayfinding solution for patient and employee apps. // By Jane Weber Brubaker // “Would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice of the Cheshire Cat. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get Read More
The results of an Economist Intelligence Unit survey, commissioned by Marketo, indicate that 99% of marketers plan to invest in marketing technologies in the next year. Here are other key findings: Impact on Revenue Of the B2C marketers surveyed, more than half (55%) feel that their marketing departments are regarded as little more than a Read More
Have you ever read Google’s 10 philosophies or, in the company’s words, “Ten things we know to be true”? Today’s ezine is devoted to number 1, “Focus on the user and all else will follow,” and number 5, “You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.” These two explain the latest Read More
Ask the Expert, with Mark Shipley The use of mobile devices to surf the Web has been steadily increasing, and Google recently made an algorithm change that proves mobile devices are here to stay. As of April 21, Google has begun favoring websites in mobile searches that are mobile-device friendly. And on May 5 Google Read More
Columbia Memorial Health (CMH) in Hudson, New York is about two and a half hours from New York City and Boston, and a 45-minute drive from Albany. How does a small community hospital in upstate New York compete, when patients have easy access to their pick of world-class hospitals like Mt. Sinai and Mass General, Read More
#HCMKTG SHORT TAKES In Part One of our two-part series, Kathy Divis, President of Greystone.Net shared her perspectives on the forces shaping healthcare marketing. Here in Part Two, Kathy shares “The 5 Digital Trends Marketers Can No Longer Ignore” from her presentation at the Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategies Summit in Las Vegas in April Read More
By Mark S. Gothberg The demands of healthcare reform and an increasingly competitive environment have led to accelerated digital innovation. During last year’s eHealthcare Leadership Awards program, I clearly observed that organizations have made major improvements in their websites and expanded social media. They are also using mobile applications to engage current and prospective customers 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
If your service area covers three states, and your health system’s name only includes one state, it’s time for a change. That’s what Iowa Health System concluded in 2013 when it changed its name to UnityPoint Health. The change was more than just a solution to a geographic misnomer. It represented an overhaul of the Read More
If you Google “deadly cancers” you’ll probably find a link to the Top Five Most Dangerous Cancers in Men and Women on page one of the search results page. The article and infographic was posted by Iowa-based UnityPoint Health, the fourth largest nondenominational health system in the U.S. UnityPoint has been busy optimizing its website Read More
When the program manager for the Executive Health program at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) came to Andrew Quinn, Interactive Marketing Director, and asked him to put the program’s printable exercise guide up on the website, Quinn suggested a different approach, a mobile solution. “Everyone has smart phones these days, especially this particular Read More
By Lisa D. Ellis How can one health system communicate most effectively with thousands of employees who work in different locations and on different schedules? This was the challenge recently facing Scripps Health, an integrated nonprofit health network in the San Diego area that has more than 14,000 employees working at five hospitals, 28 clinics, Read More
By Sheryl S. Jackson Online appointment request forms are not a new idea. In fact, physician offices and hospitals have incorporated them into their website design as one way to increase convenience to patients. At Barnes-Jewish Hospital (BJH), however, a strategic approach to information or appointment request forms has proven to be an effective marketing Read More
by Lindsey Sharp A hospital website, in and of itself, generally won’t bring patients in the door and create long-standing doctor-patient relationships. However, when you combine a strong content marketing strategy with strategically placed calls-to-action (CTAs), you not only educate and engage visitors but also connect them with the people and services at your facility Read More
by Cheryl L. Serra This month Intermountain Healthcare will begin promoting Intermountain Health Hub, a container application and nine applications that launch from within it. The apps and a mobile responsive patient portal also included in the container will allow users to learn about health-related issues and complete tasks related to their healthcare on their Read More
by Kris Rusch Scheduling medical and dental appointments can be a source of frustration for patients and providers alike. Patients often complain of long lags between the time they realize they need to see a practitioner and the date of the next available appointment. For people wanting to see specialty care providers, the next available Read More
by Neal Linkon When they visited, my parents were always surprised at how much my kids had changed. I hardly noticed because I saw them every day. Now that I’m back in healthcare, I feel like my parents. I was away for more than three years. When I came back a year ago, it felt Read More
by Mark S. Gothberg “This is the story of taking an off-the-shelf, out-of-the-box tool – the Epic patient portal – and making it a branded, differentiated, and best-of-class portal experience,” says Cindy Moon-Mogush, senior vice president of communications at Aurora Health Care, an integrated system that serves eastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Although the organization Read More
by Mark S. Gothberg “People always talk about how great Amazon.com is and how all websites should be like it. But a healthcare site shouldn’t be like Amazon, where a consumer buys a book and then browses the site for other things of interest to buy. People have very specific interests in healthcare, and a 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
by Mark S. Gothberg When you combine six organizations, you are going to have some internal communications issues in the best of circumstances. But the problems at The University of Arizona Health Network, formed in 2009, were enormous. Six interim CEOs headed the Tucson-based organization during a three-year period before a permanent CEO was hired Read More
// By Sandra Fancher // Mark Twain once said, “Supposing is good, but finding out is better.” As a Web and marketing professional, you know it’s easy to immerse yourself in a Web project and assume every choice or assumption you make will be clear to everyone. You know what’s worked in the past. You 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