Topics

Short Takes: Patient Portals in Practice

by Corinna Underwood A patient portal—an online hub that allows patients to log on to the Internet and have full access to their health information through a secure website—is an essential means for a practice to achieve maximum patient engagement. It also offers an easy way for patients to stay in touch with caregivers, make Read More

Viral Videos Provide Multiple Ways to Share Organizational Stories

by Cheryl L. Serra What can you do with five minutes? As healthcare marketers are discovering, you can pack a lot of tears and tissue-grabbing—or guffaws, giggles, and sing-alongs— into five minutes. Healthcare organizations are increasingly turning to the power of video to showcase the emotional aspects of what they do, leveraging the relatively short Read More

Consolidating a Hospital’s Brand Presence on the Web

by Ted Balowski Having an effective Web presence is critically important for a hospital or healthcare organization, but how should that presence appear for a brand with more than one location? Is it a good idea for a brand with multiple locations or offerings to consolidate efforts? In the past decade, there have been profound Read More

Can You Crack the Google Code?

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

Context Is Key When It Comes to Accurate Analytics

by Tomy Ames In the last month’s issue of eHealthcare Strategy & Trends, we left off when things were getting good: The importance of context when it comes to looking at your key performance indicators (KPIs). This month, we’ll examine how to determine appropriate categories so that you can accurately assess your site’s successes and Read More

Using Technology to Enhance Patient Care and Improve Efficiencies

by Brian O’Neill Healthcare providers and payers have intrinsically known for years the importance of effective communication to high-quality care. But, truth be told, the system hasn’t always worked as well as it should. Primary care physicians have their challenges in communicating with specialists (including hospitalists). Physicians and nurses don’t always talk to each other Read More

Leveraging Web-Based Solutions in Surgical Training and Patient Care

by Lisa D. Ellis In today’s fastpaced healthcare environment, two innovative hospitals are finding new and exciting ways to leverage web-based technologies—both to strengthen their own internal strategies and also as vehicles to share research, training, and lessons learned within the broader medical community. Nicholson Center’s commitment to education The Florida Hospital Nicholson Center in Read More

Entrepreneurship Unleashed: Incubators Accelerate Healthcare Innovation

Jane Weber Brubaker, Editor of eHealthcare Strategy & Trends

by Jane Weber Brubaker When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law in March 2010, it simultaneously ignited a firestorm of disruptions to established but unsustainable care delivery and reimbursement models and opened abundant opportunities for healthcare innovators. A new generation of digital health entrepreneurs has emerged to meet the challenges of healthcare Read More

Contextual Analytics: In Search of Useful KPIs

by Tomy Ames While all good online marketing specialists employ some type of analytics reporting, oftentimes these one- or two-page automated reports contain only the typical key performance indicators (KPIs) for the entire site or section. KPIs such as visits/sessions, visitors, page views, pages/session, average session duration (time on site), and bounce rate can be Read More

How Strong CTAs Drive Online Activity at Baylor

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

Electronic Health Records Now Benefitting Even Smaller Practices

by Brian O’Neill With healthcare reform bringing millions of newly insured patients into a system that already sees shortages in primary care physicians and select specialties, the industry is being pressured to become ever smarter about how providers, insurers, and patients themselves communicate and interact. Fortunately, affordable electronic communication tools are available today that support Read More

Did You Get the Msg About Healthcare, Texting, and HIPAA Compliance?

by Jennifer Busick Here’s the problem: You need a way to get critical healthcare information about a patient to a healthcare professional—or a group of healthcare professionals. Maybe a nurse needs to know that vital test results are ready. Perhaps an emergency room physician needs a neurosurgery consult. Or, perhaps the need is as simple Read More

Common Healthcare IT Project Mistakes That Lead to Suboptimal Outcomes

by Richard ‘RJ’ Kedziora How do you define project failure? Is it when the project costs more than the original budget? Is it when the delivery date is long past and the project is still incomplete? Or is failure defined by a completed project that does not fulfill the agreed-on requirements? Maybe it’s all three. Read More

Addressing Urban-Rural Treatment Gaps Through Telemedicine

by Kris Rusch The near-universal access to at least some forms of information and communications technology in the United States makes it possible for hospitals to reach new patients with telemedicine while helping to address long-standing disparities in access to care, particularly for residents in rural areas. Telemedicine, also called telehealth or E-therapy, refers to Read More

The Connected Patient: Information as Currency in Online Communities

Dan Dunlop

// By Dan Dunlop // It has been said that the patient is the most underutilized resource in health- care. With the rise of the “connected patient,” clinicians, administrators, and marketers have started to place greater emphasis on patient insights and desires. Hospitals and health systems, how- ever, have been slow to address the changing Read More

Using Condition Content to Lead Patients to You Online

by Mike Maloney and Katrina VanTyne In 2012, Google published a landmark study about the hospital selection process, “The Digital Journey to Wellness.” According to the study, 75 percent of searches by prospective patients revolve around four specific areas: conditions, diseases, symptoms, and departments. Our web team at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, VT, Read More

Web Takes … July 2014 Picks

St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center www.sjhsyr.org You could argue site visitors aren’t all that interested in home page banners that promote key services and special offers or events; they just want to find specific information. If that is the case, why not make the banners a direct reflection of the global links? This approach is Read More

Optimize Use of Social Media in a Social Media Crisis

by Sheryl S. Jackson Proactive Planning and Simulating a Situation Prepare Social Media Managers Healthcare organizations may not have moved as quickly to adopt social media as other industries, but of the 1,562 hospitals self-reporting social media use, 1,300 hospitals have Facebook pages, 1,005 have Twitter accounts, and 1,084 use Foursquare, according to the Social Read More

How Do You Conduct a Holistic Web Audit to Increase Web Engagement?

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

Integrated Marketing: Measuring Results at the Medical University of South Carolina

by Kris Rusch With four hospitals and 120 off-campus care settings located throughout South Carolina, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) relies heavily on integrated marketing, according to Jane E. Kelley, MUSC’s interactive marketing manager. Integrated marketing is defined in numerous ways, but the term generally refers to deploying a strategic blend of traditional Read More