p u b l i s h e d by F i e rc e H e a lth c a re c u s to m p u b l i s h i n g

When someone in your area searches for health information on the internet, does your hospital make the list?
When you sit down at your computer, what do you do? if youre like most people, you probably check your email first. you might go to a social media site like Facebook or youtube, or check in with the news at cnn or Fox. then you search for the answer to a question you hadlike if that headache your son got last night could be from the new medicine hes taking. if this sounds familiar, youre not alone. according to research by the pew Research centers internet and american life project and the california Healthcare Foundation, looking for health information is the third most popular online pursuit, after email and searching for information. eight in 10 internet users admit they turn to the web when they want health information. specifically what are they looking for? two-thirds search for information about a specific disease or medical problem. more than half want to know more about a medical treatment or procedure, such as medications or surgery. and a significant portion is looking for information about doctors and health professionals (44 percent) or hospitals and other medical facilities (36 percent). all of this leads to an important question: When someone in your area searches for health information online, does your hospital make the list? because it should. the people most likely looking for health information are just the people youre targeting in your marketing efforts, including: caregivers for children, parents, friends or other loved ones Women adults between the ages of 18-56

Attract, Engage, Convert:

Web Content for Hospitals

s p o n s o R e d by

Reducing Hospital Readmissions WitH enHanced patient education

even among groups less likely to search for health information, the numbers are still significant. nearly 60 percent of adults aged 66-74 use the internet, and almost one-third of adults over age 75 do, as well. sixty-four percent of adults living with at least one chronic condition and more than half of adults living with a disability use the internet. once these folks are online, theyre likely looking for health information, too. While hospital sites rarely become destination websites--like cnn.com or youtube.com--healthcare organizations can miss a golden opportunity if theyre not providing the kind of content that potential patients are looking for.

Give them what theyre looking for

Kathy divis, co-founder and president of greystone. net, a consulting firm that specializes in website development for healthcare organizations, says that if you look at things from a patient perspective, the number one thing theyre looking for is a doctor to treat a disease or a symptom. Folks who are coming to your website are there for a purpose, divis says. theyre there because their moms been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and they want to learn more about it. or they want to find out physicians at your hospital treat diabetes. or they want to know if there is an education class or diabetic cooking class. this is a good thing. but it can quickly turn negative if they cant find what theyre looking for, according to divis. it can be disheartening for people who come to your site if they cant really get to the things that are important to them, divis says. people are busy, and you dont have many opportunities to make a good impression. theyre not going to bother to come back next time because theyve been to your site and they couldnt get what they needed. michelle murphy knows how that feels. before interviewing for her current job as director director of public Relations and marketing at Hardin memorial Health in elizabethtown, Ky., she checked out the hospitals website to find out more about the organization. i really couldnt find anything, she admits. Hardin memorials site previously offered only very basic informationlocation, contact information and a little bit on services. all that has changed, especially since Hardins new site launched in

it can be disheartening for people who come to your site if they cant really get to the things that are important to them.
Kathy Divis, co-founder and president of Greystone.Net

February 2010. We now offer a full health portal essentially with over 90,000 health articles, multimedia videos content, interactive tools, recipes, really anything [patients] could potentially want, murphy says. she adds that web traffic has grown exponentially as a result. Kay Franks, marketing manager at st. louis childrens Hospital, agrees that getting good health information has been an important step in increasing her websites usability, as well. one of the reasons people go to the internet when they receive a diagnosis is to find health information, she says. but developing content is a time-consuming task, especially for smaller hospitals with limited recourses. content is tough for everybody, divis says.

Reducing Hospital Readmissions WitH enHanced patient education

childrens that can treat your childs asthma, diabetes, or diseased liver. i think its the full circle of tying it all together thats important.

Working with content providers

mark gothberg, editor of eHealthcare Strategy and Trends, an industry newsletter, says its wise to license basic health content and focus staff efforts on highlighting the hospitals key services. a new birthing center, a new heart center, some of these facilities are quite attractive and really lend themselves to a nice virtual tour slides, or a video, he says. you need to be able to develop that content for your key services, key aspects of your organization, internally. turning content over to another organization, though, can be nerve-wracking. its difficult to delegate such an important task to someone else. gothberg says it is important to check out the company and ask lots of questions, such as: How long has the company been in business? How often is the content updated and maintained? How integrated can the content be to the website? What other types of products (enewsletters, print publications, brochures, mobile apps, text messaging, etc) does the company offer? the ideal situation, gothberg says, is that health content is seamlessly put into a website and has the branding of the [healthcare] organization rather than the vendor. even organizations that have great resources internally go to the outside for certain content because the outside content is well developed, easy to understand, updated regularly, and its more cost efficient to go out and license [content]. originally, Hardin memorial added health content to its site with links to Webmd. that worried me because the consumer would get lost and never get back to my site, murphy says. now, with licensed content, it looks just like our website. once [web users are] done with health content, all they have to do is look up above and theyre right back to our website, where they can look for something else.

number one, its huge. number two, keeping it up to date is an unending job. theres never a time when you check content off the list as done because you have to be continually refreshing and building and enhancing your content. murphy adds another challenge to that list: reading level and terminology. nine in 10 adult patients has difficulty understanding health information at one time or another, she says. the Joint commission is really pushing health care organizations to have information at a fifth to seventh grade reading level, she adds, saying the goal is the same for her website, as well.. thats one of the reasons she turned to licensed health content for Hardin memorial. its delivered at that same readability level, she says. Franks made a similar decision at childrens Hospital, but she also develops custom content: We have pediatric specific content that we lease, but we supplement that with content that is written specifically for our service line, says Franks, who believes this combination of prepared content and custom-written content optimizes both the usefulness of the website as well as the efficient use of resources. asthma is asthma, and the signs, symptoms and treatment, all of that is the same whether youre here or youre in denver, she says. so for me to take the time to write all that, thats not a productive use of my time. but to be able to say, Heres the team at

Making sure people can find your information

getting the content onto the website is only the first step. Helping people find that content is just as vital. murphy makes sure the word gets out through advertisements, brochures, a community consumer

Reducing Hospital Readmissions WitH enHanced patient education

health newsletter, enewsletters, Facebook and twitter. every single day, i post a health story on our Facebook page, murphy says. i try to tie it in to whats going on in our community right now. so over the summer when it was really, really hot, i put six articles about staying hydrated or using sunscreen or how to spot heat exhaustion, she explains. Visitors to the Hardin site also can choose from a variety of health enewsletters on different topics, which drive interested people back to the website. our traffic has just gone through the roof, murphy says. in July 2011 when the site launched, health content was no. 11 on the list of most popular pages on the site. now its no. 6and rising. Franks also uses social media, enewsletters and print publications to drive traffic to the childrens

Hospital website. both the hospital and the hospitals call center tweet daily. When something hits the news, were able to address it right away, she explains. For instance, when the american academy of pediatrics changed the guidelines for car seats we were able to send the tweet about that. because local news organizations follow the twitter feeds, these tweets often results in media coverage. childrens Hospital has two blogs, one written by physicians and another by patient care staff. it also was the first childrens hospital in the nation to launch its own mobile phone app, Kids care, which gives parents information based on their childrens symptoms. based on what the parents enter, it lets parents know whether they should take the child to the emergency room, call the physician during office hours or try the following home treatments. since its launch in 2007, the program has been downloaded more than 25,000 times. these are all examples of pushing the website out to potential patients. but most people looking for information go straight to a search engine like google or bing to find what theyre looking for. this is where search engine optimization comes into play. many web searches for health information will take the user to Webmd, national institutes of Health or other web-based medical encyclopedia. but when local hospitals add health content to their websites it opens up the possibility that their names will come up on the search list too.

...most people looking for information go straight to a search engine like google or bing to find what theyre looking for. this is where search engine optimization comes into play.

they may well start their search at some place like Webmd, says divis. but eventually theyre going to want to know whos treating this [condition] locally. this is something Franks takes very seriously. she works with an outside consulting firm to tag her content with keywords that make it easier to find her websites content in search engine results. We want to make sure that our parents can find what theyre looking for, she says. once Franks has their attention, then we give them contact information, so that if they have other questions, they can get a hold of us. divis advises that, when possible, websites should integrate generic health content with the hospitals specific services. on a page describing prostate cancer, a list of oncologists who treat that type of

Reducing Hospital Readmissions WitH enHanced patient education

cancer should appear. and, on the oncologists webpage, there should appear links to information about prostate cancer and its treatment. the more integrated you are, the more useful and effective your website will be, divis explains. if i come to your page on prostate cancer, dont make me go looking 800 other places to find out who treats it [at your hospital.] murphy insists on the 3-click rule for the Hardin website: users should be able to reach any content on the website in no more than three clicks for ease of navigation, she says. to make sure the Hardin site lives up to this standard, murphy calls upon the hospitals cadre of volunteers, mostly retired citizens who enjoy giving their time to the hospital and the community. We put them in our computer lab to test it, and we made sure that as far as the usability standpoint, they are able to navigate the site and understand the content. based on their feedback, the it department goes back and makes the navigation clearer and more straightforward. gothberg points out that a good internal search function can really turn an okay website into a great one. its amazing how many hospital websites view the search function as a kind of afterthought. some of these websites do not have the ability to find even the simplest information, he says. tagswhich identify different elements of the website content are the key to making this type of integration work. divis points to the dartmouth Hitchcock medical center, which has its website set up so that a search categorizes the types of webpages: service information, health encyclopedia, specialists, etc. its a smart way to build content, she says. thats the kind of thing that you can do when you tag content. in addition to tags, other features that can make internal searches more effective include auto-complete functions and keywords to help searchers choose the right terminology (and the right spelling) so that they find what theyre looking for.

of patient loyalty and service buildings, but also in health outcomes. study after study shows that patients who are actively engaged in their healthcare tend to get better faster. the best hospital websites build in useful live chats, questionnaires, health calculators, recipes, and other calls to action that invite the internet user to become a patient. they want to do business with you, divis says. they know that they can do business online with their banks, their other financial organizations. they want to be able to do the same type of activity on a hospital website. and, she adds, they dont buy the argument that healthcare is different. [they think,] if i can buy stocks online, i ought to be able to schedule a doctors appointment and see my test results. even if most hospitals dont yet offer online appointment scheduling, its essential to have a top-notch physician directory. childrens Hospital recently added video profiles for most of its physicians onto its website. now, parents can not only check a physicians credentials, but they also can listen to them talk about their approach to care or their innovative treatments. With parents trusting the care of their child to a stranger, this kind of personal touch makes a huge difference.

Engaging patients

so, you know what patients are looking for, youve provided it and youve made sure they find it. the next step is the clincher: you have to engage them. this is where the website pays off not only in terms

Tracking results

Whats the proof that these techniques work? thats

Reducing Hospital Readmissions WitH enHanced patient education

where the numbers come in. and if you track the right information, the numbers can be impressive. according to gothberg, the first step in understanding the return on investment for website development is knowing how much the hospital makes on key service lines. From there, gothberg says, determine which elements on the website will lead to someone having that procedurewhat turns that internet searcher into a potential patient, and then whats going to engage that potential patient and convert him or her into an actual patient. Franks has been reporting on web traffic to the childrens Hospital site for 10 yearsever since the vice president of the hospital threatened to cut her budget. it dawned on me, that i needed to do a better job of letting senior leadership know just how valuable the website is as a revenue source for the hospital, she says. While the number of hits to the website might sound good, Franks knew that revenue is what really resonates with hospital administrators. she includes in her report online revenue sources such as online donations, gift shop purchases, and even billing revenue from the hospitals online bill pay feature. last year our website generated 8.2 million dollars in revenue, Franks says. thats really hard for them

to say no to. Franks also tracks referrals from the website. this is made possible by having one telephone number on all marketing materialsonline and print. the number takes callers to the hospitals call center, which always asks people where they got the number. When the caller answers website, appointments made within 90 days of that call can be traced back as a web referral. in addition, Franks encourages physicians and hospital staff to let her know when patients come to the hospital through the web. one physician just called me less than a month ago, and said, Hey, i just thought youd like to know i got a call from a dad who saw our video on youtube, and wanted to know if his daughter was a candidate, and shes coming in next week, Franks says. that kind of story makes it into her monthly report to hospital administration. Her approach has converted some nonbelievers among the medical staff, as well as the hospital administration. they now see that the Web is the way to go. When i started here, as i said 12 years ago, it was always, Hey, i need a brochure. now its, Hey, i need a web page, so i think theyre finding the power of the internet.

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Reducing Hospital Readmissions WitH enHanced patient education