Are you taking full advantage of the Internet?
Getting the most from your Web page
With the growing popularity of the Internet, more home health agencies are going on-line. There are myriad uses for the Web, and whether you use it as a means of simplifying the transmission of data between your multi-branch agency or providing a health care resource for the community, today’s Web pages have become part marketing tool and part public service. To make the most of your Web page, it’s important not only to understand how you want it to work for your agency, but how it will serve the public.
"The Web is not a replacement for sound judgment or human intervention," explains Tom Burke, director of communications for net.Genesis of Cambridge, MA. "It’s a way of streamlining your business processes and making them more efficient."
Why the Web? Why not?
Larry Leahy, MHA, CHCE, is the director of programming integrity for Beaumont Home Health Service in Victoria, TX. He says that like so many other organizations his agency started using its Web site as a means of getting its basic agency information package out to the public.
"We got a lot of hits," he says about the initial site. "We actually had a nurse in Russia who accessed our site and wanted more information. It’s nice, sure, but you aren’t getting any referrals from it so we started asking how we could make our site more beneficial."
Now, three years after its incipience, Beaumont Home Health wants to take its Web page a step further.
"We’re looking at how we can make it an information source for our own staff and patients as well as for outside referral sources, physicians, and hospitals," he says. Beaumont Home Health is considering using its Web site as an interactive site where people could write in their questions and a staff member (in this case, the director of administration who is currently working on her nurse practitioner certification) would provide answers.
"We want to be more than just a promotional site," explains Leahy. "We’re also interested in making it an easier way for referral sources to send patients to us whereby they could fill out the documentation on-line. Another issue we’re examining is using our Web page as a means of anonymously reporting compliance-related issues."
In either case, security is an important issue. For people to use a Web page for handling sensitive material, they have to trust that it is a secure mechanism for reporting. For this reason, Leahy has contracted with an outside vendor to develop a secure site.
The ability to use the Internet as more than a reference tool is part of what makes it so powerful, Burke explains, "but it becomes an issue when you start talking about the traditional thoughts and practices concerning liability and regulations. So far, it’s a highly unregulated medium. It’s a new territory for people, and there really are no rules of the road on the information superhighway."
When it comes to using a Web site beyond its more traditional function, Burke points to a start-up company that is looking to make some interesting changes in the recovery-care arena. Their thought, he says, is that if used properly, they can harness the untapped resources of the Internet to their advantage. "Namely, if they can use it [the Internet] to demonstrate a reduced-cost advantage, then they will become very attractive to third-party payment systems," he explains.
"And, because of the importance of continuity of care, if they can maintain patients’ histories so that patients know that as they move from provider to provider their health information travels with them, then the health care provider knows it will be providing global coverage," he notes.
The Internet as an employee
Good help is hard to find. Your Web page can’t replace the skills of a talented home care nurse or aide, but it can provide you with the opportunity to reallocate your resources allowing your staff to get up from behind the desk and go into the field and do what they are trained for.
"It’s almost impossible for the health care provider to be an expert in everything," Burke notes, "so by providing links to other health care sites, you can free up your staff." Burke cautions, however, that while the Internet is still a relatively free-form information vehicle, it has become an unwritten rule that any company whose link you might consider providing be notified of your intentions.
Although increasingly the Web is being used to challenge the traditional boundaries of how health care information is dispensed, the use of the Internet to replace everyday office tasks is still quite commonplace, says Burke.
"Rather than it being a one-way reliance on the provider for information it [the Internet] becomes a point of information exchange. If someone, for example, is in recovery or, generally speaking, homebound, it gives them the ability at 3 a.m. to consult a Web-based resource. It takes a lot of burden off having a person at the end of an 800-number 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he explains.
In a similar vein, Burke notes that the Web also can be used for "logistical things such as, The handle on my crutch broke. Where can I get a replacement at a place that’s open 24 hours?’"
A paperless future
People are also using it for help that approaches pre-diagnostic tasks that might otherwise be performed by a person, he continues. "With it you have the ability to go on-line and conduct a physical exam by answering questions to the point where you could get a prescription."
Leahy foresees that at some point in the future, his agency’s Web site will be as much a part of agency operations as it is a patient-care service. "One day," he says, "we want to take all our policies and procedures and just be able to alert our branch offices that policy XX has been updated and they can go on-line and download it. Now [policies] are all on the computer, but whenever we update them, we have to make 13 copies and send them out. We’re heading to a more paperless structure."
And at some point in the future, he hopes to use the Internet to perform other internal functions, such as providing employees access to their 401(k) plans.
For all its possibilities, you still may not be using your Web page to its fullest potential, Burke explains, unless you have a means of tracking how many people are accessing it and the ways in which they are using it. Web tracking programs (see Hospital Home Health, June 1999, p. 68) not only allow you to see how many people use your site in a given time period, but exactly where they are going.
Less sophisticated programs will only tell you from what page a person exited your site, but should that page have a host of health care-related links, you would have no way of knowing whether people were moving on to the Red Cross’s site or one providing tips for a heart-healthy diet.
By using a technique called redirect, explains Burke, you are "putting an invisible page between your Web page and the link so that when you go back to do an analysis, you can see that of the 100 people who visited your page, 60 of them went to the Red Cross site."
With this information, agencies can "make better-informed decisions about what will go into their sites," he continues. "If you have a lot of people leaving your site in favor of the Red Cross, then you might consider providing more of that kind of information so they will stay on your site.
"You want them to stay on your site longer and to rely on your site as a primary source of information. It’s referred to as stickiness’ and means how often people return to your page and how long they stay." he explains. The assumption, states Burke, is that the longer a person stays, the more helpful your information is.
But unless the visitor is a potential source of referral, why would you care how long a person visits your Web page? "Well, if you can keep people on your site, and they keep returning because the information you provide is valuable to them, they will start to identify you vs. a competitor because you are providing them with better value." n
Sources
• Tom Burke, Director of Marketing Communications, net.Genesis, 215 First St., Cambridge, MA 02142. Telephone: (617) 577-9800.
• Larry Leahy, MHA, CHCE, Director of Program Integrity, Beaumont Home Health Service, No. 1621, 1501 Mockingbird Lane, Suite 404, Victoria, TX 77904. Telephone: (512) 578-0762.
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