I can’t deny it. I’m a news junkie. And when it comes to healthcare news, there are some great online resources that my co-workers and I read for daily updates, industry news and analysis.

Here are a few of our favorites at CPM. Share yours by leaving a comment below.

HealthLeaders
A complete source for healthcare news and analysis, with articles on topics including marketing, physician relations, community hospitals, leadership and more.

Modern Healthcare
A popular source for healthcare business news. Offers up-to-the-minute coverage of important events and trends.

Med City News
A healthcare-focused reporting site that offers the latest news for industry stakeholders.

Healthcare IT News
The source for news on healthcare technologies, IT strategies and tactics, regulatory issues and provider and vendor updates.

Healthcare Finance News
This online resource has complete news coverage of  “the unprecedented financial challenges faced by healthcare providers and payers.”

American Medical News
Published by the American Medical Association, this print and online news source is directed to physicians but contains articles of interest to many in the healthcare industry.

FierceHealthcare
This site is  just one part of the Fiercemarkets array of digital news sources for healthcare executives. (The Hospital Impact blog is worth checking out, too.) Fierce bills itself as delivering the “most relevant, need to know news.”

This week I’m at the Healthcare Internet Conference in Vegas and had the fortune of talking with Ryan Squire (@OSUsquire), Social Media Program Director with the Ohio State University Medical Center. Ryan talks about their social media program, some challenges faced and offers advice for hospitals looking to strengthen their digital strategy.

I believe the insight and intelligence is out there. The answers you need lie within search results.

Brian Solis (@briansolis) on the power of using social networks to understand and connect with “social customers.” Healthcare Internet Conference 2010.

Live from the Healthcare Internet Conference

Scott Linabarger, director of Internet and Interactive Marketing for Cleveland Clinic, kicked off the Healthcare Internet Conference today with an informative presentation on the redesign of the Cleveland Clinic website. The common theme? Measure everything.

Scott started working at Cleveland Clinic at a low point for the website. There was little satisfaction, either on the patient or business end. So, he began working with a Web team to “align the user needs with business objectives.”

Here are a few of their core efforts that he shared:

1) Doing the research
Who are our users? What do they want? What do we want from them? Cleveland Clinic looked to the research for answers. They got information from a variety of sources: online surveys, user interviews and customer satisfaction results (Foresee Results). In part, research revealed a key need to improve both search and navigation.

Someone on Scott’s staff also puts together a weekly Web report gathering all of the analytics from the previous week, which they see as a valuable way to both see and show the whole picture of online engagement and conversation.

2) The road to conversion
Scott defined their conversion funnel as attracting (driving traffic to the website), engaging (ensuring a pleasant, interactive experience online) and converting (when people schedule appointments or contact them).

He reported that SEO and SEM are both critical for driving people to their pages. Evidence of their success is their large point-per-click budget and a 10:1 return!

One of their big initiatives was making improvements to their “Find a Doctor” pages. They added videos of doctors and overhauled the user experience to make it easier for users to find what they were looking for. Along with other website enhancements, this helped them make progress in both improving user satisfaction and in their conversion rates for scheduled appointments.

3) Creating advocates and support

Communicating progress and metrics to leadership and stakeholders is essential. Scott’s team employs some creatives ways to consistently convey this information:

• A weekly e-mail they distribute to a list of 200 decision makers
• Weekly and monthly score card reports to a physician advisory council
• In person qualitative and quantitative quarterly reports to the CEO

While Scott says that there is more work to be done, he believes their efforts have delivered a more pleasant experience for users and helped Cleveland Clinic make great progress toward achieving business objectives.

Earlier this week, Scott Conrad posted about changing the rules of healthcare call centers. After talking with one of our clients, we decided to post an example of how a real hospital is implementing these new ideas and systems to personalize their call center communications.

For this week’s podcast, I spoke with Melissa Scialdone, a data analyst with Unity Health System in Rochester, New York. Melissa talks about why they chose to implement a CRM system in their call center, some challenges they’ve faced and the benefits they see moving forward.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

by Scott Conrad, Manager of CPM’s Teleservices Center 

Imagine this:  A woman calls into your hospital to schedule her yearly check-up. Not only can she do so easily, but your hospital representative asks if she would also like to schedule her yearly mammogram. The woman, realizing that it has been a year, schedules her mammogram as well. 

While it seems simple, this scenario is an example of an entirely new type of a hospital call center: one based on building personal relationships.

New rule #1
Call centers don’t have to be “one size fits all.” 

If you’re trying to build relationships with people and be their medical home, you can’t treat them like a number. Just like the woman who calls in for her check-up, every patient deserves to have their health needs met quickly, to be given options, to be educated. That way, the patient feels good about their decision and leaves with actionable choices.

I manage CPM’s call center, which implements outbound and inbound campaigns for hospitals. Our staff has access to personalized messages — derived from a CRM system with information about the patient — that ensure each caller has a unique experience based on their health history.

New rule #2
Hospitality extends to every phone call.
When I talk with health systems and marketing departments, it’s clear they’re eager for new ways to connect with people one-to-one. Our teleservices center was created to answer this need.

No longer is the focus on transaction-based calls, which prioritize information gathering. Now, technology can supply this information so that the call focuses solely on the patient.

Think of the new call center as a personal concierge that informs and educates about health resources. For example, if a call center employee knows that a patient has received a mailer promoting a service, he or she can follow-up on this — creating new opportunities for the hospital and helping patients stay on top of their health needs.

New rule #3
Call center ROI is a reality.
In the past, ROI calculation in a contact center was very elusive and the definition very gray. But within the new healthcare call center, you can measure results. Every time we up-sell or cross-sell to a caller, we track whether the offer was made and later, if they took advantage of the offer. Each interaction becomes part of campaign, and collectively, you can see what benefit those offers give your hospital.

Scott Conrad is the Manager of the Teleservices Center at CPM, empowering clients to personalize their communications with patients. Learn more about our call center here.