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