MedTouch Blog - Web Intelligence for Healthcare

MedTouch Summer Webinar Series: Free Healthcare Webinars

Paul — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:39:53 +0000

Travel budget cut? No problem. We’re bringing you a summer full of the best educational content available. The best part? It’s all free. Think of it as a staycation for your mind.

#1: Turn Traffic Into Appointments
Why Search Matters

With 80% of the American population performing healthcare research online, web marketing has gone mainstream. Search engines offer an unprecedented opportunity to reach people looking for services your healthcare organizations provides. By analyzing and increasing your search traffic, you can improve your organization’s profile online while driving transactions. This forty-five minute webinar is perfect for anyone struggle to keep up with their changes in search traffic and results.

#2: Best Practices in Social Media
A Research Update
As of June, 250 hospitals in the US are using social media. But to what purpose? And how are they measuring results? This presentation – based on careful research rather than opinion – will highlight the best tool for healthcare organizations to generate traffic, what media children’s hospitals can exploit better than anyone else, and why crisis communications is a 24×7 job in a completely new way. You’ll also learn why senior leaders demand ROI for these projects, how to provide it to them before asking for funding, and how this will dramatically change your staffing needs.

#3: The Good, the Bad, the Very Ugly
An Introduction to the Specific Challenges of Healthcare Website Design
Designing and reorganizing a website for a healthcare organization involves overcoming specific brand, organizational, and technical requirements. In this insightful webinar lead by our own Interactive Developer, you will come to appreciate the three essential principles of good web design, understand how to work within and around organizational barriers, and deliver a successful, attractive, and useful project.

#4: The Future is Closer than You Think
Why Your Organization Needs a Strategic Plan for Your Website and What You Can Do About It

Most healthcare organizations have five year strategic marketing plans, but few have comprehensive, goal-oriented, multi-year plans for the web. Despite the rapidly changing technology, it is to possible to have a true Internet strategy and develop a road map that delivers measurable value to your organization. Come hear about how several MedTouch clients have used this process to unearth opportunities and deliver highly visible results to the organization.

#5: How to Run a Successful Bid Process
The Art and Science of Writing Excellent Web RFPs

If you’re going to issue an RFP in the next few months, you need to attend this webinar. In just forty-five minutes you’ll learn the six mistakes nearly every RFP writer makes and how to avoid them. More than that, we’ll share with you how to finesse the best RFP possible out of your organization, how to run the process with minimal time and maximum result, and why you should or shouldn’t hire an outside consultant to manage the process.

#6: One, Large Television
Why Web Videos Matter More than Ever

The web is a screen-based medium, not a word-based medium. With the advent of broadband Internet access, the way people access information has fundamentally changed. YouTube is the second most popular search engine, eclipsing Yahoo in recent months for Internet searches. For hospitals in particular, online videos provide a mechanism for reaching and engaging their communities in novel ways. This webinar will outline why videos matter more than ever, illustrate best practices in healthcare, and propose four concrete steps you can take to take your Internet presence to the next level.

Fastest Growing Metro Areas: How will Healthcare be impacted?

Paul — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:38:02 +0000

Raleigh, Provo UT, and Fort Myers are going to double in size in the next 15 years.

New York, LA, and Chicago — the 1, 2, 3 of largest metros — are only going to grow by 10%.

Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta (4, 5, and 6) will grow about 50%.

As the Boomers retire to warm weather states, the change and impact to healthcare delivery services will be two fold. First, end-of-life care in these metro areas will boom, which has mixed financial results. Second, the migration of Boomers out of other (Northern/Mid-West) cities will reduce the baseline procedures that most healthcare systems rely on to stay in the black. (Heart, ortho, neuro, cancer, and peds/OBGYN.)

This suggests that we’ll see a clear two-tier health system emerge in the most rapidly growing cities — new buildings, new technology, new delivery mechanisms but likely only for those who can pay for it.

More about Metro growth here.

Speaking at AMA Houston Tomorrow: Direct Marketing to Physicians

Paul — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:41:19 +0000

Our own Matthew Dillingham will be speaking at the AMA Houston event tomorrow, “Direct Marketing to Physicians.”

Here’s more about the event. You can still sign-up at the door!

How do you break through the 200 marketing messages physicians receive each day?

At our June Healthcare SIG meeting, a panel of four experts will discuss the challenge of getting your message to physicians. They’ll describe the use of on-line and in-person tools and techniques to reach physicians. Hear directly from a pharmaceutical representative about how best to capture the interest and attention of busy physicians. Learn tips and techniques to help you develop more effective direct-to-physician programs.

Program Format
Each expert will provide a 15-minute presentation that is followed by a panel discussion with audience participation in the form of questions and answers. The discussion will be moderated by Vickie Alleman, a former healthcare marketer and author, with more than 20 years experience in marketing to physicians.

Attendees Will Learn:

What’s new in on-line marketing to physicians

How to utilize social media and mobile technology for business communication

How to get to the decision maker; meeting with physicians and clinical staff

The use of old fashioned grass roots marketing efforts

Panel
Mathew Dillingham - MedTouch
VP, Client Services and Strategies

Alicia Garza - Pharma Representative and Trainer

Anna Dragsbaek - Houston Area Immunization Partnership, Executive Director

Julie Chance - Strategies by Design
Healthcare Relationship Building Coach

Well Tumbl’ed: Excerpts

Paul — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:46:07 +0000

Will the effort to reduce health care costs by comparing treatments ultimately undermine the relationship between doctors and patients?

— Comparing the Costs of Medical Treatments - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

MedTouch Hires Interactive Director

Requiring hospitals to adopt electronic medical records would reduce their own costs for treating Medicare patients. But for the government to capture the savings, it would in turn have to reduce what it pays the hospitals.

— Health Blog : Efforts to Cut Health Costs Could Take a Decade to Show Results

Obama seeks $634B over 10 years for health care

Social media adoption is going up for all generations, said Mr. Owyang. The fact that boomers are increasingly using these tools is a clear indication that it’s not just a fad, he said.

Of the demographics Forrester tracks, the gracefully aging segment is the largest — a hefty 100 million consumers in the United States. That’s billions each year spent on travel, cars, gadgets and more. But the trick for advertisers hoping to attract older consumers, Mr. Owyang said, is to engage them in a way that isn’t too complicated or requires an excessive amount of effort.

— http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/baby-boomers-luddites-not-so-fast/?scp=1&sq=boomers&st=cse

MedTouch Appoints New Director of Interactive in its Growing Houston Office

Paul — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:34:58 +0000

MedTouch, the Online Marketing Experts for Health Care, Continues to Deepen its In-House Expertise with a New Senior Appointment

HOUSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–MedTouch, the leader in transforming healthcare organizations online, announced that Christina Brinch Clark has joined the Houston office of the firm as Director of Interactive.

Ms. Clark comes to MedTouch from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, where she served as Program Manager, Web Content for the world’s premier cancer center. During her tenure, Ms. Clark oversaw the Internet Services content team and supported the institution’s public and private websites, which consisting of over 15,000 pages and generating nearly 25 million views a year.

“Having worked inside of one of the world’s best healthcare institutions, I am eager to help all of our clients surpass their goals,” said Clark. “I am excited by the vision of progress MedTouch embodies and working alongside our clients to make that a reality.”

In her new role, Ms. Clark will work to ensure clients take their existing sites to the next level, cost-effectively managing their content, developing online communities, and extending into the social networking arena.

“We’re fortunate to be growing in this climate and hiring Christina is the latest example of our ongoing commitment to providing the highest possible level of industry expertise and client service,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO of MedTouch. “As healthcare organizations wonder how to take the next step in online marketing beyond simply having a website, we have a wider array of services to offer.”

Setup MedTouch Tumblr Page

Paul — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:30:13 +0000

Even wackier than Twitter: the MedTouch Tumblr page.

President Obama: “We Must Address the Crushing Cost of Health Care.”

Paul — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:42:25 +0000

Text from President Obama’s Address to Congress:

…We must also address the crushing cost of health care.

This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In the last eight years, premiums have grown four times faster than wages. And in each of these years, one million more Americans have lost their health insurance. It is one of the major reasons why small businesses close their doors and corporations ship jobs overseas. And it’s one of the largest and fastest-growing parts of our budget.

Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold.

Already, we have done more to advance the cause of health care reform in the last thirty days than we have in the last decade. When it was days old, this Congress passed a law to provide and protect health insurance for eleven million American children whose parents work full-time. Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy, and save lives. It will launch a new effort to conquer a disease that has touched the life of nearly every American by seeking a cure for cancer in our time. And it makes the largest investment ever in preventive care, because that is one of the best ways to keep our people healthy and our costs under control.

This budget builds on these reforms. It includes an historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform – a down-payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American. It’s a commitment that’s paid for in part by efficiencies in our system that are long overdue. And it’s a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come.

Now, there will be many different opinions and ideas about how to achieve reform, and that is why I’m bringing together businesses and workers, doctors and health care providers, Democrats and Republicans to begin work on this issue next week.

I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.

The True Cost of Friendship? 1/10th of a Hamburger. Burger King gets jettisoned from Facebook.

Paul — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:47:36 +0000

Frequent guests know of my love for all things Facebook and winsome burger commercials, but I never thought the two would meet so well.

The NY Times reports today about the lose a friend, gain a whopper campaign:

While many trivial actions do prompt Facebook to post an alert to all your friends… striking someone off your list simply is not one of them.

It is this policy that Burger King ran afoul of this month with its “Whopper Sacrifice” campaign, which offered a free hamburger to anyone who severed the sacred bonds with 10 of the friends they had accumulated on Facebook. Facebook suspended the program because Burger King was sending notifications to the castoffs letting them know they’d been dropped for a sandwich (or, more accurately, a tenth of a sandwich).

The campaign, which boasted of ending 234,000 friendships, is history now — Burger King chose to end it rather than tweak it to fit Facebook’s policy…

The ad, which proclaims a Whopper is stronger than friendship, is the first I’ve seen involving the de-leveraging of social networks.

I had thought, back in the day, Facebook did alert one to the changes in tides of friendships so I understand the nature of the policy: one’s social network should only grow. But it does underscore how loose those bounds are: by Burger King’s math, every facebook friend is worth about $.25

Inauguration Day

Paul — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:36:21 +0000

We’re streaming CNN.com at our offices! Back to regular blogging soon!

Forget Bernie Madoff, is Social Security the #1 Ponzi Scheme?

Paul — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:00:46 +0000

In the wake of the Madoff disaster, I have read some minor op-eds citing Social Security as the biggest Ponzi scheme ever.

Really?

Honestly, I would think that this kind of talk might not warrant coverage from CNBC, whose article “The Real ‘Mother’ of All Ponzi Schemes” likens our national safety net for seniors and the poor to losing your money in fictitious investments.

I quote:

We feel bad for the people who came late in investing with Bernie Madoff and got burned when his Ponzi scheme fell apart. Now, I don’t begrudge anyone their social security benefits, but I also don’t want my generation to be feeling sorry for itself when our time to collect comes around and the money isn’t there.

Mitchell Zuckoff offers his retort at CNN via Social Security a Ponzi scheme? No way!

P.S. For those following the Madoff scandal — as I am, shamelessly — I would commend the Boston Globe article about the chief whistleblower Harry Markopolos.