At the height of last year’s financial struggles, Greystone.Net sent out a survey to its current and former customers about their budget outlook for the coming year. We certainly struck a chord with our hospital and health system audience, who at the time were wondering if the sky truly was falling. We received a tremendous response, with more than 170 hospitals or health systems submitting a survey. The study yielded some interesting findings. The biggest revelation was that despite 40 percent of hospitals/health systems experiencing some sort of budget cut, 68 percent said funding is stable or increasing for the Web. Based on the findings, Greystone.Net cut back on some of its events that require travel. We also added a new category to our annual Best in Class awards for successful Web initiatives amidst severe budget constraints.
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Our recent study on social media has generated a lot of buzz from healthcare bloggers. The high level of response is really encouraging, and Greystone.Net will continue to do this type of research in the future. There seems to be a tremendous demand from healthcare marketers for information on current industry topics.
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According to our just released research, 9 in 10 hospitals or health systems are currently involved to some degree with Social Media. Other key results from the study:
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Recently, Greystone.Net was helping a client hospital with a business plan for its Web site. As part of the arrangement, we designed, launched and managed a web satisfaction study for them. This is something that we are doing more and more these days, as organizations seek to add customer input into their redesign efforts. My background is in research, so I am usually heavily involved with these engagements.
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This was an extremely common refrain at the 13th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference. I can’t tell you how many times I heard some version of this expression during conversations in the hallways or during concurrent sessions. With so many first-time Conference attendees this year (in fact, this was our best-attended conference ever!), I am not sure how many were prepared for three days full of case studies by peers, speeches by industry visionaries, and networking with some of the most successful hospital Web site managers in the country.
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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Dickens penned those immortal words a century and a half ago, comparing the cities of London and Paris. These days, things are seldom that cut and dry – especially when it comes to Web Analytics. It is very difficult to compare two Web sites and get a clear picture. Take the following example:
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One of the things that we have blogged about consistently on this site is the need to set up a version of your Web site for visitors using mobile devices. Since this is such a hot topic in the industry right now, we decided to do a little research. Ultimately, we found that only 1 in 5 hospital / health system Web sites currently have a mobile-friendly version of their Web site. The most popular reasons cited for not creating such a site are “not enough of a priority” (55%) and “shortage of time and/or FTEs” (45%).
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For those of you not familiar with Greystone.Net Benchmarking, this is a service I manage that allows customers to anonymously compare performance with other hospitals on key Web areas such as Web utilization and number of FTEs. Recently, I surveyed existing Greystone.Net Benchmarking customers about how we could improve the product. In their responses, two conclusions stood out: First, make it easier to see key conclusions and results. Second, reduce the amount of time it takes for users to enter data and review reports.
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In case you missed the big news last week, Facebook announced that it has added its 200 millionth member. That’s right – Facebook Nation is now the fifth largest country in the world. If your temptation is to discredit the impact of this amazing growth on healthcare by assuming that these new members come from the ranks of teenagers and college students, you would be making a big mistake. A majority of Facebook users are now over 35, and the fastest growing segment of Facebook users is actually women over 55. According to CNN, “There are now about 1.5 million female users older than 55 on the site — roughly a 550 percent increase over six months ago.” As a 33-yr old who has recently received friend requests from my mother and several of her friends, I can personally attest that the AARP-ization of Facebook is for real.
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Basketball fans know Charlie Villanueva, a Milwaukee Bucks forward, as a solid but not spectacular NBA player who helped UConn win the 2004 NCAA National Championship. He is also known by some for his work as a spokesman for the NAAF (National Alopecia Areata Foundation), which supports research into the autoimmune skin disease from which he suffers.
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