Archive for April, 2008
New article about how little doctors use email… for patients.
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From the Boston Globe:
LOS ANGELES—Suzanne Kreuziger is a registered nurse who uses e-mail almost exclusively to communicate with friends. But when it comes to reaching her doctor, there’s a frustrating firewall.
The barrier is her doctor’s own reluctance to talk to patients through e-mail.
“It makes sense to me to have the words laid out, to be able to re-read, to go back to it at a convenient time,” the 34-year-old Milwaukee woman recently wrote on a social networking site. “If I were able to ask my physician questions this way, it would make my own health care much easier.”
Kreuziger’s experience is shared by most Americans: They want the convenience of e-mail for non-urgent medical issues, but fewer than a third of U.S. doctors use e-mail to communicate with patients, according to recent physician surveys
So I’ve heard the arguments about doctors not wanting to use technology (which I don’t believe; check the trunk of their European sedans — you’ll see some fine golf technology there) and the challenges about recording this information and HIPAA blah blah blah.
Isn’t this about the fact that a) most health plans won’t reimburse for a physician’s visit via email and b) the fear of lawsuits?
You can also read the full low-down of how little doctors use email.
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A crazy idea: update your homepage.
Posted by: | CommentsAn article from the Neshco newsletter, about engaging patients online.
Here’s a crazy idea: next quarter, when you take a new service line to market, update your homepage. Put the service line front and center and, much to the chagrin of the Director of the Wound Care “Center of Excellence” and the doctors who wield the latest CyberUtensils set, you will see traffic to the service line jump at least 20%.
Want to bump it to 30%? Update the content on that service line’s landing page, tying it back to the exact language in the offline campaign and resubmit to Google.
It’s classic marketing 101, but the average hospital website is so focused on representing the institutional identity, it has little relationship with offline marketing efforts. I’ve heard plenty of excuses for this ranging from the political – we’d have to get the CIO involved, to the technical – our website software is so lousy, no one uses it, to the sublime – we might get more admissions than we could handle for that program. Heaven forbid!
None of these excuses matter to patients, who struggle to make a health care decision in a marketing landscape full of noise and who are increasingly lured by genuinely helpful websites, such as RevolutionHealth.com, with advertising budgets that begin to approach your institution’s payroll. These social healthcare sites have quintupled in the last year – from five to thirty-one at last count – and they are all seeking to monetize patient choice, driving your marketing costs up, up, up…
Read more about how to engage patients online.
Our new Houston office.
Posted by: | CommentsYup, it’s official: we announced the opening of the MedTouch Houston office.
My favorite thing about my job is coming up with quotes such as:
“Houston is an increasingly important and growing healthcare mecca, and developing a ground-level presence in the region demonstrates a commitment to being thought leaders in our industry,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO of MedTouch.
Free Webinars: Our Spring Webinar Series
Posted by: | CommentsSPRING WEBINAR SERIES
5 Things IT & Marketing Should Know About Each Other
IT and marketing have been known to disagree… Who owns the website? Marketing or IT? Through this webinar we will provide insight on how to interact with “those guys”. Do the people in IT need to learn SWOT? Do the guys in marketing need to get the newest version of Guitar Hero? These, and many more questions will be answered during this webinar.
Register Now!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
2pm EST | 1pm CST | Noon MST | 11am PST
I Am Too Pretty To Do Math: Ideas and best practices that will help your web site become more than a cost center
Most hospital web sites are still considered a box that needs to get checked off on the “to do list”. Well it is more than that, and we will provide best practices and ideas on how to communicate that your site is a living, breathing ROI machine that is not only a marketing tool, but is the key to your hospital’s overall success.
Register Now!
Wednesday, May 29, 2008
Thursday, May 30, 2008
2pm EST | 1pm CST | Noon MST | 11am PST
Will It Search: How Search Engines are Changing the Way You Develop Your Website
Search engines are looking at more than your content, and so are your patients. This webinar will explain how video, images, blogs, user generated content and other new media are changing the way people search and find things. This will not only change your web site strategy, but your hospital strategy as well.
Register Now!
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
2pm EST | 1pm CST | Noon MST | 11am PST
The Web as a Visual Medium, Part II
It’s not your father’s marketing. The Web has changed how marketers market. Or at least it should. If your website looks and acts like a brochure you will want to attend this webinar. We will discuss how the Internet has changed how people look for information and what they expect when coming to your site.
Register Now!
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
2pm EST | 1pm CST | Noon MST | 11am PST
In House or Out House: Does Your Organization Have the Internal Resources to Develop a Great Web Presence
See what it takes to run a successful in-house web department, and how to recognize when you need help. This webinar will explain how the Internet is changing so quickly, and what you need to do as an in-house manager to stay ahead of the curve.
Register Now!
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
2pm EST | 1pm CST | Noon MST | 11am PST
Pretty hospitals make for healthier patients
Posted by: | CommentsHere’s a no-brainer from the Atlantic: dingy hospitals rooms have a negative impact on patient care.
Over the past decade, most public places have gotten noticeably better looking. We’ve gone from a world in which Starbucks set a cutting-edge standard for mass-market design to a world in which Starbucks establishes the bare minimum. If your establishment can’t come up with an original look, customers expect at least some sleek wood fixtures, nicely upholstered chairs, and faux–Murano glass pendant lights.
I was just listening to a web video promo about the Amazon.com Kindle where said author (Michael Lewis) talked about how great it was to pass the hour long wait with his new digital reader. Because, you know, the magazines are 6 months-old Sports Illustrateds.
“Except for the computers you see, it’s like a 1980s hospital,” says Jain Malkin, a San Diego–based interior designer and the author of several reference books on health-care design. “The place where patients spend their time 24/7 is treated as if it’s back-of-the-house.”
What the article didn’t go on to do was prescribe an solution: bulldoze old hospitals? Make medical treatment virtual? Open retail clinics?
A shocking expose on an under-reported hospital problem
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Grandfathers Accidentally Switched At Hospital
New article about Southwestern Vermont Recruitment
Posted by: | CommentsThe press keeps coming in about our Southwestern Vermont Medical Center recruitment:
Recently, the hospital has looked to new ways to recruit physicians to the area. The SVMC’s recruiting Web site recently won an award from the Interactive Media Council. The site, according to a hospital release, was the first hospital Web site ever to receive such an award.The site, www.greenmtnsgreatdocs.org, was launched in October and later given the award by the IMC, a nonprofit organization of Web designers, developers, programers, advertisers and other professionals. The site was conceived by Kevin Robinson, communications director at SVMC, and Nicole Goswami, physician recruiter, McDonald said.
The Web site has “helped our physician recruiting efforts greatly,” Robinson said in a release. “We’ve been able to fill several open positions already and haveover100 physicians who have expressed interest in SVMC. In just a few months, we’ve hired more physicians than we did in all of 2006.”
The site was created by MedTouch, a company that specializes in Web design for health care organizations.
You can follow the link to read the entire piece on the award winning recruitment website.
Starbucks introduces… coffee.
Posted by: | CommentsSome of you might know my obsession with Starbucks — not the coffee as much as the corporate juggernaut that is the Starbucks Coffee Company. What other corporate do you know that has a half dozen books written on its history, management style, stock price, lore and so on? To wit: it is the only retail store known that can open two stores across the street from each other and improve sales at both locations. Fascinating.
The big news out of Seattle this week: the new Starbucks roast. I admit it, I walked a few blocks to try it today and you know what? I liked it.
But the very exciting thing to me is watching a brand re-invent itself overnight. Since Howard Schultz took over again as CEO, he’s ousted the foul-smelling breakfast “sandwiches” and refocused the company on providing a mellower Pike Place Roast as well as specialty cups at premium prices.
Which just shows you how good marketing works: when all else fails, go back to your core.
So what’s your core? Can your organization even articulate it? Could you reintroduce yourself to the world?
The After Talk: Recruiting the Millennial Physician Online
Posted by: | CommentsWhen you speak at tradeshows as I often do, there’s a relief in going first. Our good friend Kevin Robinson from SVHC helped us with our talk yesterday. What I thought was going to be the more interesting side of the story — all the research and thinking that went into targeting how to whom we designed the website — turned out to be less interesting than the actual campaign and the results.
The campaign started due to a 25 position shortage on a staff only comprising 140 docs. SVHC has a great internal recruiter, but they were still shelling out major dollars for outside help as well. The worst part was they had only 10 viable candidates in their application pool for 25 positions in September – the beginning of recruiting season. A bad situation for sure.
Well, we were a little more than halfway through the talk and explain our approach and how and why things work and an attendee raised their hand to ask, “Ok, it’s a nice site, but how did you measure results? Visitors? Hits?”
Nope. Docs hired.
Everyone who had been half-paying attention sat up straight.
The next question: “How many docs did you hire?”
We increased the application pool from 10 to 120, signed 10 doctors in the last 6 months, and are on track to have committments from all 25 open positions this year.
More stunned silence.
And then I realized, the research was good and all, but the results are what made this a successful project and worthy of talking about. We probably should have loaded that up front and then gone back over the strategy.
In chatting about it after with my co-presenters Kevin and Sarah, I realized my fear was the take away might be “all I need is to put up some videos on a website,” when the actual work was much more sophisticated and focused than that.
Here’s a link to the Southwestern Vermont Professionals Recruitment Website again for those who haven’t seen it.
We’ll likely re-give the talk as a webinar in May, so keep your eyes peeled.
Rutland Herald: Hospital Web site an aid to recruitment
Posted by: | CommentsMore press about us. Good timing too, since we’re speaking at CBM together.
BENNINGTON - By emphasizing the Southern Vermont lifestyle to doctors on their new recruitment Web site, local hospital officials have increased the number of potential recruits by about tenfold.Southwestern Vermont Medical Center’s physician recruiting Web site, on the Internet at www.greenmtnsgreatdocs.org, includes such features as a video with testimony from doctors who already work at the Bennington hospital, doctor profiles, links to available housing and a list of open positions.Kevin Robinson, communications director for the hospital’s parent organization, Southwestern Vermont Health Care, pointed out that the site also appeals to a potential recruit’s private life.
