A Strategy Framework for eHealth: Flow-through to ROI

By Eric Engelmann, President & CEO, and Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

We’ve now covered three stages of Geonetric’s strategy framework for eHealth: The eHealth Maturity Model. Today, we move forward to Level 4: Flow-through to ROI (return on investment). This level focuses on the financial impact that eHealth initiatives can bring to the table, translating the Level 3 outcomes into financial form.

Before we begin, let’s quickly review the first three levels of the model.

The eHealth Maturity Model Levels 1-3

The eHealth Maturity model includes five steps:

Nothing says happy holidays like chili – at least at Geonetric.

By Eric Engelmann, President & CEO

We’re definitely in the holiday spirit here at Geonetric. There’s the toy drive. The Secret Santa gift exchange. A cookie exchange.  And my favorite – the annual Geonetric chili cook-off.  Here in the Midwest we’re in what appears to be another brutal winter, and something about chili makes it a little more bearable.  What I love most about the cook-off is we end up with a wide-array of chili that is as unique as our employees. We always have new additions to the cook-off, and there are always some old standards-like the one that’s too hot for 95 percent of us and a vegetarian option.

This year we spiced up our chili cook-off a bit and enlisted two special guest judges: Cecelia Hanley, the food editor at the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and Amy Johnson Boyle, a friend and active member of our community. This year we offered five categories for entrants including: Most Decorative/Unique, Best Vegetarian, Spiciest, Most Creative and Best Overall.

Patients taking charge

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

Fascinating piece in BusinessWeek this week discussing how Health 2.0 sites (particularly PatientsLikeMe.com) are trying to change the healthcare game. The magazine titles the article “Can patients cure health care?” but they’ve opted for the less aggressive “Health 2.0: Patients as Partners” title online.

A Strategy Framework for eHealth: Desired Change in Outcomes that Matter to our Core Business

By Eric Engelmann, President & CEO, and Ben Dillon, Vice President, & eHealth Evangelist

Over the past several weeks, we’ve outlined the first two stages of Geonetric’s strategy framework for eHealth: The eHealth Maturity Model.

Designing for Today’s Web User

By Casey Hansen, Front-end Developer

We’ve all seen Web sites with flashing graphics, waving backgrounds and music. We’ve seen pictures fly across the browser window, and navigation menus that feel like a poor version of the old “Whack-A-Mole” game.

Today’s Web user is on your Web site for one main reason: content. They are looking for answers to their questions! Are they interested in all of the flashy design features? To most users (including me), this is just extra eye-candy that can sometimes get in the way of the ultimate goal: seeking information.

Rush-Copley Medical Center Launches User-Focused Web Site

By Angie Brunow, Senior Project Manager

Rush-Copley Medical Center launched a new Web site this week. The main goal for the site was to create a “user-centered design,” focusing both the design and Information Architecture (IA) on the users’ experience. 

Finding the flu – Google Flu Trends vs. Privacy Advocates

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

The power of the Internet as a real-time international information network has long excited researchers looking to track disease outbreaks.  The challenge with fast-progressing outbreaks of any disease, such as influenza, is that parameters of where it is spreading and how fast are often not available until well after the outbreak has actually occurred.

A Strategy Framework for eHealth: Measuring Satisfaction

By Eric Engelmann, President & CEO and Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

A few weeks ago we posted the first article in a five-article series that outlines Geonetric’s strategy framework for eHealth: the eHealth Maturity Model. The article focused on the first level of the model which is critical mass adoption. Gaining adoption is definitely an important first step to a successful eHealth strategy, but it’s essentially a blind measure of the performance of your Web site or portal. Once you have gained adoption, you need to move on to the next step: measuring satisfaction. Although satisfaction is much more complex to measure, it provides more actionable insight from your visitors.

Just to refresh your memory, Geonetric’s Maturity Model includes five steps:

The patient experience

Most everyone measures patient satisfaction within their hospital settings, but few do it in a way that’s meaningful in terms of eHealth transactions. Taking a broad look at the entire patient experience, there are many aspects of patient satisfaction that happen before and after the actual physician encounter occurs. Many of these pre- and post-encounter activities are happening online with greater and greater frequency.

The Hospital of the Future

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

Next month, we’ll be holding a Webinar on an approach to strategy for eHealth, and we plan to share some thoughts on strategy on this blog and in our Revolution Report, our monthly eNewsletter.

Whenever you look at strategy, a good foundation is to look at broader trends within healthcare going forward.  Strategy development is an exercise in the future.  Good strategy is aimed not at the challenges of today, but those of the years to come.

Fortunately, the Joint Commission recently released Health Care at the Crossroads: Guiding Principles for the Development of the Hospital of the Future.