In the year 2020, we are well and truly within the digital age. So why is it that many healthcare organizations seem to be behind with all of these digital advancements? Maybe it is safe to say that they have more important things to worry about but neglecting one’s online presence renders them invisible in today’s society and has a negative effect on patient retention. Below are five digital trends healthcare providers should adopt to skyrocket patient engagement in 2020.
A Healthcare App
Consumers can already control most aspects of their lives from their mobile devices, completing multiple tasks such as online shopping, traveling, and finance management. Patients now want to be able to monitor their healthcare in the same way. Patients expect access to appointment scheduling, medical records, patient-provider messaging, and bill pay, all in a single healthcare app. Most healthcare IT professionals are not app developers and requesting a solution like this may raise some eyebrows. Medical Web Experts have made creating practical healthcare app solutions for today’s toughest healthcare problems their priority. This is made possible through their extensive experience in developing interfaces for health IT systems, their use of the NEWEST mobile app coding languages, and their deep understanding of HIPAA law. Medical Web Experts allows healthcare organizations to create an iOS and/or Android (News - Alert) mobile healthcare app.
A Patient Portal
While most healthcare organizations already have a patient portal, most of these patient portals are antiquated and offer limited functionality. Modern patient portal solutions facilitate the improvement of the overall patient experience, provide patients with a platform to be proactive in their health, and build a productive and collaborative patient-doctor relationship. A patient portal can come in the form of a web application or mobile (smartphone) app depending on the technical maturity of the healthcare organization. Medical Web Experts works closely with Bridge Patient Portal, who offers fully customizable patient portals, and include several features, such as:
- Patient engagement reporting
- Care plans
- Personal health records
- Custom patient forms
- Appointment requests
- Prescription refills
- Online bill pay
- Multiple concurrent, bi-directional EHR/PM/HIE interfaces
- Secure messaging
- Advanced patient authentication
- Private-label branding
- Mobile-responsive design
- Medical record sharing
- Multilingual support
- iOS and Android mobile apps
- Multi-tenant support (multiple facilities)
HIPAA compliant website
Healthcare organizations without a website in 2020 are basically invisible to the everyday consumer seeking to find a provider in their area. Potential patients increasingly use websites to research healthcare organizations before making an appointment. Following this, consumers may provide these organizations with important pre-visit PHI (Protected Healthcare Information) via secure forms, such as:
- Contact forms
- Patient intake forms
- Scheduling appointments online
- Paying for services
This is where HIPAA compliant website design comes in. PHI provided to these sites is protected through security measures, as defined by HIPAA law.
What features must a HIPAA compliant website have?
- An SSL certificate, this creates an encrypted connection between the server and the user. It’s a vital element because it is what prohibits unwanted third parties from being able to access the data transmitted using the site.
- A healthcare website must only link to other compliant systems. When a current or potential patient clicks “submit” on any form they use on the site, the information is securely transmitted to HIPAA compliant systems only.
Healthcare website design companies should understand the requirements for HIPAA compliance. Most local agencies don’t specialize in medical website design and are not prepared to build a site per HIPAA specifications. HIPAA compliant web developers are also required to sign a business associate agreement (BAA). A business associate agreement is a necessary contract with any subcontractor that will handle or store PHI. When it comes to HIPAA compliant website design, the BAA confirms that the web design and development company will adopt the responsibility for all patient PHI that is received by them or handled by the site they build. A healthcare organization wanting to develop a HIPAA compliant website needs a BAA before work can begin. With Medical Web Experts, the required BAA is signed at the same time as the service agreement.
Medical Web Experts have years of experience and a proven suite of HIPAA-compliant products and services, including the development of custom healthcare websites. Healthcare organizations can be confident that they are taking the right steps towards compliance. Regular audits by internal compliance officers and annual third-party HIPAA audits are just some of the ways Medical Web Experts demonstrate a commitment to compliance. These services are extended to their clients as well.
Medical marketing company
Healthcare professionals are often not expert marketers as well. That’s why it is vital they utilize a team that is experts in medical marketing. A medical marketing company can provide digital marketing services that assist in building an healthy online presence, increase search engine rankings, and grow healthcare businesses. Medical marketing services include SEO, Video Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Pay Per Click, Branding, Email Marketing, and much more. Most medical professionals lack the time to be continually writing relevant content for their site. Medical Web Experts offer professional, SEO- and conversion-optimized content for healthcare websites, blogs, or marketing materials. Medical Web Experts specializes in a range of content for the healthcare industry, from plain language patient materials to high-level science writing for health professionals.
Medical Web Experts understand the legal barriers to marketing medical products and services. They have on-staff legal counsel and are experienced with delivering success in a highly regulated environment, and they are skilled in managing rules and regulations surrounding HIPAA compliance.
HIPAA Hosting
It’s vital that the applications, as mentioned above, and websites are hosted on a HIPAA compliant hosting service. A HIPAA compliant hosting service is one that follows the guidelines defined by HIPAA to prevent medical record information data breaches.
The Medical Web Expert Cloud is built on Amazon Web Service’s (AWS) industry-leading HIPAA-compliant hosting service. The MWE Cloud provides a host of additional features for heightened security, compliance, and development efficiency. Examples of MWE Cloud benefits include:
- Support for accelerated service-based development
- The ability to manage infrastructure as code
- Seamless log tracing
- Support for scalable software design
- Moderated and secure access to ePHI
- Rapid and seamless deployment
- Robust service monitoring with optional client notifications
- Build and run stages are easily kept securely distributed, but identically configured
