Flexibility.
It matters for the digital presence of a multi-hospital system like Gundersen Health System.
But trying to control consistent branding and content across more than 100 locations in three states led to some instances of duplicate content and the creation of multiple microsites.
In healthcare marketing, staying competitive takes many different forms. Staying ahead of the organization across town. Adjusting to acquisitions and changing alliances. Keeping up to date with ever-changing technology and search algorithms. Exceeding consumers’ ever-increasing expectations.
So while you’ve been cranking away at the day to day, it may feel like your website is drifting behind. But is it time to act? Recent advances and the maturation of several marketing technologies means that now is the time to shift gears, find your energy and put your site back in the lead.
For many organizations, that sense of ‘lagging the competition’ is centered around website features and functionality. You’re looking to boost the online user experience while simultaneously increasing its alignment with organizational strategy. Where to begin? Let’s look at where one of the most visible areas of your website is headed.
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Great health systems are always evolving. The same is true of their websites.
Avera Health is a large, integrated health system. Based in Sioux Falls, S.D., Avera serves more than 100 communities throughout South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota.
Avera and Geonetric have been partners since 2005. Over the years we’ve redesigned their site a few times, each version offering new visual design, enhanced functionality and improved user experience.
Avera’s updated site launched earlier this month and, from its stunning design to the impressive new content, this site is a show-stopper.
Here are a few of the highlights.
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Are they talking about me? What are they saying? Why would they say that!?
Sounds like a flashback to junior high, but you’re probably asking these same questions when you think about what your audience may be saying about your organization online.
Social media comments and posts have an impact on your organization. What one person posts in a review or on social media has the potential to influence dozens or hundreds of others. And, even more critically, the way you choose to respond is equally influential.
This isn’t a new problem, but it’s a continually growing challenge. It’s easy for a disgruntled patient to post a critical comment on Facebook or a negative review on Healthgrades. It’s also easy for that patient to copy and paste the comment on a handful of sites. For your team, it’s a time-consuming effort to find and respond to all of these posts.
But it’s worth the effort. Here’s why you should monitor and respond to online reviews and social media posts:
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When you have great doctors, you like to show them off.
Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare in Southeast Wisconsin has great doctors but was concerned about the lack of provider reviews on external sites like Healthgrades and Vitals. In their experience, only a handful of their doctors had profiles with ratings and reviews on those sites, some of which weren’t reflective of the quality of care being provided, and none of the providers had enough feedback to be statistically significant.
In addition, Wheaton Franciscan’s marketing team knew consumers were using ratings and reviews as a decision support tool both inside and outside healthcare. And they know that with changes in healthcare reform, those consumers will only become more active in decision making as they are asked to cover more and more of their own healthcare expenditures.
For Wheaton Franciscan, these two issues made launching their own provider ratings and reviews more important than ever. They partnered with Geonetric, their digital marketing agency, to make it happen.
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The provider directory is one of the most challenging parts of any health system website and easily the one most likely to run you afoul of organizational politics. Everyone has an opinion and, more importantly, many doctors have an opinion. And doctors’ opinions tend to be a little louder than everyone else’s!
That said, I spend lots of time researching and testing provider directories and I’ve noticed two things that the most successful ones tend to have in common.
There’s been a tremendous amount of interest amongst healthcare marketers recently around publishing physician ratings and reviews on physician profiles. And for good reason. When done right, organizations often see a number of benefits including an SEO boost, reduced reliance on paid promotion, more engagement with physician profiles and improved patient acquisition. I covered some of this in my previous blog post, and wrote about it more extensively in our new physician promotion ebook. In this post, however, I’d like to cover a few important aspects about physician ratings and reviews you may not think about immediately.
If you’re anticipating implementing physician ratings and reviews on your website, there are some things you need to make sure you have in place before you go live. Getting these things taken care of will ensure that your physician ratings and reviews are trusted by site visitors and provide tangible value to your organization.
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Cone Health Medical Group has more than 500 providers, over 100 locations and one goal in mind: connect potential patients with physicians who can help them feel their best.
That’s why Cone Health Medical Group decided to change the focus of their website and put the spotlight on their star players: their doctors and providers.
An important part of creating an effective physician profile includes demonstrating the physician’s skill and expertise. It’s important because consumers look for and use this critical information as they engage in the process of selecting a physician. In our Physician Promotion eBook we outline a number of ways to effectively highlight your organization’s physician’s skills and expertise, but there’s one increasingly important way that deserves its own treatment: physician ratings and reviews.
From Amazon to Netflix and beyond, consumers are increasingly accustomed to seeing evaluations of the goods and services they shop for. Often these take the form of an iconic star rating system that’s become the Internet’s at-a-glance method of conveying user satisfaction (or other subjective measure) with the product at hand. But it’s not just for shoes and movies anymore. It’s also for your physicians.
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