Planning a value-added Web site - Digital Perspectives - healthcare industry Web sites

Healthcare Financial Management, Nov, 1999 by Fran Turisco

A healthcare organization will have its best chance of justifying the time, effort, and money it invests to create and maintain a Web site if that site is designed to provide optimum value to both the host organization and its customers. Key to developing an Internet strategy that adds such value are the answers to the following questions:

Who are the Web site's target customers? In many instances, the Web site will have more than one type of customer. For example, the customer groups targeted by an integrated delivery system (IDS) could be patients, prospective patients, specific patient populations (eg, women, children, diabetics), physicians, affiliated organizations, related service organizations, vendors, internal stakeholders, and payers. Each of these potential site visitors will have different reasons for accessing the site.

The Web-site planners also need to decide which customers should be cultivated and whether the target customers and Web content should change over time. For example, if the organization wishes to establish a new service, such as a women's health center, Web development should focus first on acquainting new customers with the new service and how to use it. The Web site's initial content, therefore, might include a directory of services, maps of the organization's service areas with locations of facilities, directions to the facilities, and hours of operation. After the program is established, the organization might wish to add links to specific information about the services provided or conditions treated, enable patients to request appointments via the Internet, or tailor Web pages to the needs of specific customers (eg, obstetrics/gynecology patients, diabetic patients, family practice physicians, orthopedists) to build on the organization's customer base.

What attracts customers to the Web site? Given the plethora of Web sites, free services, and health content information available online, it is important to develop Web content that will provide customers with unique and useful functions and services. Lack of such content may result in the customer dismissing the site and never revisiting it. Exhibit 1 provides a range of Internet functions currently used at existing Web sites and the potential customers the functions are intended to serve.

EXHIBIT I: POTENTIAL WEB-SITE OFFERINGS

Internet Function                 Potential Customers

Illness support groups (guided    Patients and their families
chat rooms)

Health risk assessments           Patients, specific population
                                  groups

Diagnosis-related content         Patients and physicians

Online questions and answers      Patients
(ie, user submits question;
online service provides answer)
Wellness/health maintenance       Patients
content

Service access functions (eg,     Patients, specific
appointment scheduling,           population groups,
information on services,          affiliated organizations
directions, filtered broadcast
messages)

Connectivity to legacy system     Physicians
information

Online claims submission          Payers

Purchasing and selling            Related service providers,
                                  vendors, supply distributors

What is the business value of the Web site? Many healthcare organizations regard their Web sites as a means to develop a larger market share by educating a wider customer base about their services than they could reach through more established marketing channels. There are, however, many other reasons for establishing an Internet presence.

For example, a healthcare organization may wish to develop a Web site to facilitate physician-related activities. By offering physicians access through a Web site to activities such as appointment scheduling, legacy system and medical research information analysis and sharing, and continuing medical education, an organization may be able to encourage physicians to increase patient referrals and expand their use of the organization's services and facilities.

A Web site also can be used to strengthen an organization's ties with its patients. Such ties can be established by providing patients with online access to features such as appointment scheduling, interactive customer feedback, personal health profiles with links to IDS services, health maintenance broadcasts, and healthcare information customized to the needs of particular patient groups.

Another reason an organization might wish to develop a Web site is to link with payers to facilitate claims processing, eligibility verification, and preauthorization. By providing online access to accurate eligibility and referral information, an organization may be able to reduce the number of rejected claims and improve cash flow.

A Web site also can provide a means to facilitate business transactions with other companies. The Internet offers a healthcare organization access to a vast marketplace for both buying and selling equipment and supplies, as well as a means to simplify such transactions.