Everyone knows that having a Web site is absolutely necessary in today’s healthcare industry, but did you know that only three out of every 10 Web sites launched are a success? Too often, the culprit is a simple lack of understanding of exactly who the audience is and what they want to accomplish online—a very costly mistake. An underperforming Web site can be a huge drain of time, resources, and money, and can even send the wrong message to your patients and physicians. So it’s best to fix it now, before any more money flies out the window.
The most successful brands don’t just do one thing well online, they do a lot of things well online—seven things, in fact. Want to join them? Then ponder these principles for Web success:
1. Be visitor-centric. Identify the right audience and focus on delivering the information they are seeking, not just what you want to tell them. If time and budget are limited, and they usually are, use your resources to get the audience and messaging right first. If you are speaking to both physicians and patients, create two separate sections to address their different needs.
For the patient site, speak their language. Avoid medical jargon and offer information in languages they speak. Also, provide an option for larger fonts for customers with poor vision. Then consider ways to build loyalty and drive repeat visits by creating online support communities, helping patients and families connect and support each other. If you are not certain what is most important to your audience, study social media conversations such as healthcare blogs and message boards.
It’s also smart to build long-term relationships by making it easy for visitors to request and opt in to receive more information. Be sure to adhere to HIPAA guidelines on patient privacy.
Once you’ve gotten visitors to opt in, work with the information you have collected. Use visitors’ names and send them personalized e-mails about the specific topics they are interested in.
2. Build in results drivers. What do you want your Web site to accomplish? Web sites can capture prospective patient contact information, improve the patient experience, streamline booking appointments, increase physician referrals, recruit staff members, enhance employee communications, and much more. Build the site to fully support these needs, and you can bank on a measurable return on your investment.
3. Integrate all marketing. It’s Marketing 101—your online presence, offline marketing, advertising, PR, sales, and community relations should all work in unison. Establish a consistent brand image and key messages to tie together your brand’s messaging, look, and feel, no matter where you are communicating—online, on a billboard, or on the operating table. Also, if your healthcare facility has multiple brands, then make sure the Web site conveys a clear brand for the facility as a whole, but also conveys the unique brands for the heart center, cancer center, etc.
4. New tools. It’s the Web; there will always be something new going on. Take advantage of new media such as podcasts, blogs, videocasts, and RSS feeds to share information with physicians and educate patients. Track and analyze social media such as bloggers and discussion boards to learn what topics are most important to your users and how specifically they are talking about these topics. This is real-time, cost-effective marketing research. Monitor social media to keep tabs on your reputation and to help determine how and when you should engage in the discussion.
5. No billboards in the desert. The Web is not a field of dreams. Just because you build it doesn’t mean anyone will come. Build your site with search engine optimization in mind, then get your message out and advertise where your audience is. Consider establishing microsites on unique URLs that relate to your facility’s specialty and link back to your main Web site. Search-optimize your online press releases by prominently mentioning your URL in the lead. Check your position in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL for your key search terms. If you are not coming up in the top page of results, you are likely missing significant opportunities to grow your audience.
Also, search engines love blogs and RSS feeds. Not only are they highly trusted by consumers, but this social media content is highly indexed by search engines. Consider hosting a blog that provides advice and information and offering RSS feeds with news and tips.
6. Build in business efficiencies. You might be surprised how much time can be saved by streamlining communications with partners, vendors, customers, clients, employees, and contacts online.
From patient intake and billing to managing resumes and the hiring process, a Web site can do much of the heavy lifting in everyday business activities. Intranets can do the same internally by connecting a medical facility with multiple offices and acting as a sounding board and idea incubator for employees. Utilize Web content management practices to make the publishing of information more timely and cost-effective.
7. You are never done. So, how is your site doing? Remember principle No. 2? Are you achieving the results you anticipated? What are your traffic trends? Where is your traffic coming from? Where are visitors spending their time? Are they doing the things you hoped they would do? Monitoring and analyzing your site traffic will help you make informed decisions on how to continually enhance your Web site.
Most importantly, do not make the fatal mistake of sticking with a site that doesn’t perform simply because you think too much time and money has already been invested to go back and change it. After all, if you bought an expensive new car and it stopped running, you’d get it fixed, right? Do not let your Web site just sit in the driveway and rust. Even the worst Web site can be turned into a profitable venture.
Mark Whitman is vice president of digital at Northlich, a Cincinnati-based brand consultancy. He has been the strategic architect for clients in many different industries, including The Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus.
As far as iconic campaign slogans go, it's hard to beat Avis' "We're number two, but we try harder." It's a fact of business life that somebody has to be number two (or three, or four), especially in the crowded healthcare market.
But you know what? Avis eventually dropped the "We're number two" and shortened their slogan to "We try harder." Why? Because no matter how loveable, no one wants to look like a loser.
But here's the good news: No matter what your position in the marketplace, chances are there's at least one area where you can excel—where you can try harder and be number one.
You might be dead last in market share, but you can still position yourself as the best place to deliver a baby. You might not be able to compete with a fancy academic center for the critical cases, but you can concentrate on making your ER the preferred choice because of its short wait times.
There are lots of other strategies when you're not number one, some of which I wrote about in We're Number Two! in the June issue of HealthLeaders magazine. Experts suggest you focus on your strengths, for example. Specialize in one or two service lines, throw all your money and other resources behind them, hire the best specialists, and become known as the place to go for that service.
You can also distinguish yourself on personality. If you're a smaller community hospital in a marketplace filled with large medical centers, you should be building relationships with the community and positioning yourself as the friendly, caring hospital. Your revenue might be lower than the big guy across town, but you can still be the hospital with the best atmosphere, service, and staff.
Meanwhile, who better to talk about the advantages of being number two than Don Simon, vice president of marketing and advertising at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System? He worked for Avis as VP of marketing for 12 years before making the move to healthcare.
Being "number two" in the market can be an advantage, he told me in an interview for the magazine story. Small hospitals are more nimble, he said, and are uniquely positioned to build relationships with patients and families and affect patient satisfaction in a very real way. And it's easier for them to make operational changes to meet their goals.
"Smaller hospitals can sometimes pay greater attention to the details of care," he said.
But it's so easy to say you are the hospital that cares. It's so easy to choose what you want to be known for.
It's a little trickier to actually pull it off.
And that's where the work of the marketing department is invaluable. You conduct market research to find out what your audience thinks about your hospital. You figure out if there's anything you can do to build upon areas in which you are strong and improve in the areas where you are weak. You create a message that's on target and you test the market response to it again (and again).
"Identifying the niche you want to play at is wishful thinking, you have to be really prepared to operationalize it," Bill Ott, a senior consulting firm for the St. Louis, MO–based consulting firm Numerof & Associates, told me in an interview for the magazine story.
That means educating all of your internal audiences and convincing them all to march in the same direction. You have to instill that "we're number two, but we try harder" mindset across the entire organization.
"Both referring physicians and consumers respond to that," Ott says.
The bottom line: Your hospital has to be the change it wants to see.
Gienna Shaw is an editor with HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at gshaw@healthleadersmedia.com.
Note: You can sign up to receive HealthLeaders Media Marketing, a free weekly e-newsletter that will guide you through the complex and constantly-changing field of healthcare marketing.
It's easy to get caught up in the promise of new technology. I often hear how electronic medical records will save hospitals money and improve efficiency and patient safety. Yet as my colleague Gary Baldwin has reported, EMRs often have a multitude of unanticipated costs and may even be more time-consuming than paper records--at least initially. As this reader points out, I also got caught up in the hype regarding Maryland's new electronic ICU program, Maryland eCare. I should have said that the group strives to improve outcomes and increase access to critical-care physicians, as these goals have yet to be realized.
Tech complacency
Appreciate your article on the eICU collaborative here in Maryland. We are studying how to leverage technology to improve critical care across the University of Maryland Medical System, as well.
I take exception to your lead statement, however: "One example in Maryland shows how a hospital partnership can both improve the quality of patient care and increase access to critical-care physicians through an electronic ICU program." In fact, it remains to be shown if this hospital partnership will improve the quality of patient care. The partners think it will, and have invested in that proposition, but it is premature to state that improved quality is a given. It is the same complacency that accounts for the conventional wisdom that EHRs will pay for themselves by saving money, when in fact such benefits have yet to be widely realized at the physician office level (or at the system level, either). Caring for critically ill patients is a complex endeavor, and current literature abounds with examples of "obviously" beneficial interventions that do not yield measurable improvements in outcomes.
Michael C. Tooke, MD
Senior VP & Chief Medical Officer
Shore Health System
Right care, right now and right there
The partnership between the Maryland hospital systems and Christiana's eCare in Delaware is a monumental step toward joining health forces to bring the intensivist to the patient regardless of state boundaries. The advance real-time technology of eICU is more than placing cameras and securing a contract. Mr. Jim Xinis, Mr. Ed Grogan, and Dr. Marc Zubrow, to name some of the leaders, are building the foundation to improve patient safety and quality of care. Collectively, they have overcome the hurdle of unifying the different boards, leadership, and medical staffs of the independent hospitals to agree on safety first and a sound business plan for the future of Maryland.
IHI and Leapfrog distinguish best practice quality care as the key driver of this model of care delivery. Maryland hospitals, physicians, nurses, and CareFirst initiated and followed through on an ICU collaborative starting two years ago to create standard protocols. The collaborative has created a shared organizational culture giving attention to detail with specific outcome orientation. The leaders have worked with current eICU medical directors, operational directors, physician and corporate sponsors to have both internal and external experts to launch a grounded vision. This will be a success for the patients, families, and the communities served by these hospitals.
Elizabeth Raitz Cowboy, MD Via Christi Health System
Not unique
I read your article on eICUs with interest. I did want to point out that the Christiana effort is not unique. We currently use the VISICU software through a physician group, Advanced ICU Care, based in St. Louis, MO. We have used their service since January 2006. They provide services to a number of hospitals across the country and I believe even outside the United States. In addition, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is set to go live in the next few months with a service that they are marketing to hospitals in the upper Midwest. The Advanced ICU Care group is particularly interesting in that it is a large private group of intensivists that serve in both the physical and virtual setting.
Larry T Hegland, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Saint Clare's Hospital and The Diagnostic and Treatment Center
Weston, WI
Editor's Note: The reason I found Maryland eCare (not Christiana's in-house eICU program) unique was because it not only links independent facilities together, but also has the backing of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield in the form of a $3 million grant.
One reader took offense to my assertion that nurses are trained to be clinicians, not managers, in my column, Who's Your Mentor? I agree that more nursing schools are offering some leadership courses on management. Yet one or even two management courses are often not enough training for nurses to enter senior leadership positions, based on what I have heard. So hospitals need to take a more proactive role in training their future nurse leaders.
Art of management
I am a registered nurse and have been for more than 26 years. I graduated from the University of Texas Nursing School in Austin, TX. I have a master's degree in behavioral science psychology. I disagree with your statement, "Nurses aren't trained to be managers. They are trained to be clinicians." Whilst that may be true in many areas of the country, it's not true everywhere, and many BSN programs have management/leadership courses they offer to registered nurses. Many BSN programs require RN students to take a course in management/leadership. Regardless, management isn't a skill exclusive to nursing; it can be learned in other arenas, and many nurses learn management and leadership in those other areas. If one becomes a military nurse, one is trained in the "art" of management. I wasn't in the military but three years, but I learned a lifetime of leadership, delegation, prioritization, and management skills.
I do agree that mentoring is a very important skill for "baby" nurses as well as the more mature nurse to have. Clinician and manager are not mutually exclusive. Nurses "manage" patient care. We "manage" patients and their families. Many of us are in a specialty group called "care managers"; we are the ultimate managers. Please don't neglect to point out another side of the story when making a global-type statement.
I'm sorry
Great article you wrote on saying "I'm sorry" for HealthLeaders. Your perspective is precisely why I do not advocate these types of programs. Reputation is demonstrative for hospital and physicians.
We are insurance brokers for hospitals, clinics, physicians, etc. Physicians are extremely reluctant to admit guilt. There is a fine line between guilt and not so guilty, and that fine line should be worked out with the malpractice carrier.
Let us not forget that medical malpractice carriers assume hospital and physician liability for a cost. The cost in consideration (reservation of rights) of liability is an annual premium. Insurance carriers have difficulty with this practice as well.
James Murphy SeaPort HealthCare
Carrie Vaughan is editor of HealthLeaders Media Community and Rural Hospital Weekly. She can be reached at cvaughan@healthleadersmedia.com
Note: You can sign up to receive HealthLeaders Media Community and Rural Hospital Weekly, a free weekly e-newsletter that provides news and information tailored to the specific needs of community hospitals.
H.D. Cannington, the chief executive officer for Morgan Memorial Hospital in Madison, GA, is heading to Iraq to help advise the Iraq Ministry of Health on how to redevelop and revitalize their healthcare system. Cannington will be part part of a three-person team that will attend a conference of doctors and healthcare workers in Iraq. The team is expected to meet with the Iraqi Minister of Health and give advice on a topics including clinical operations, financing, quality control, and communications as they relate to public health.
The JPS Health Network, located in Texas, is in the middle of a new billboard campaign to promote its trauma and teaching programs. This is the health network's second phase of outdoor marketing, which began last year with 18 billboards about the organization's JPS Connection program.
Paparazzi looking to snap photos of China's pregnant rich and famous often lurk near United Family Hospitals. "In a way it's great soft advertising for us," said Roberta Lipson, co-founder and chief executive of Chindex International, the Bethesda company that runs the facilities.