www.southbendclinic.com supports multiple locations, physicians and providers throughout the system. With over 110,000 visits a year, the website serves as the online resource for all of the Clinic’s services, events, news and research. The Clinic also uses the website to increase new patients and serve as a source of trusted information for its communities.

THE CHALLENGE
While undergoing a major physical transformation between 2007 and 2009, the Clinic realized it needed to revamp the website to better support its growing system and increasing services. With that in mind, the Clinic also wanted the website to:

• Attract more visitors, and ultimately new patients
• Engage patients with robust health information
• Promote key service lines with associated health information
• Highlight the Clinic as a local provider of trusted online health information
• Connect visitors to appropriate physicians and providers

While the website needed to continue to provide important information about facilities and services, the Clinic also wanted to expand it to provide a greater depth of consumer health information, especially as it related to specific, key service lines. The Clinic also wanted to use the website to better promote doctors and various providers, and make it as easy as possible for visitors to find the right care and connect to staff within multiple locations.

The system recognized that a robust library of current and accurate online health information could be used in multiple beneficial ways across the site. It needed a partner who could help identify those opportunities, and work with their online and marketing staff to fit the content seamlessly within the design of the new website. With limited staff and resources, ease of integration and implementation was a top priority in selecting the right partner.

THE SOLUTION
After looking at multiple consumer health information vendors and options, the South Bend Clinic chose A.D.A.M. as its online partner and licensed the following solutions:

• Eight A.D.A.M. Health Centers
• The Multimedia Encyclopedia
• The A.D.A.M. Symptom Navigator
• QuickSheets patient education

Because of the flexibility of the A.D.A.M. content, the Clinic was able to choose from multiple ways to display the A.D.A.M. information, and easily and quickly add the health information in a way that best worked for its strategic website plans. A.D.A.M. also accommodated their need to quickly add the information with minimal impact on the Clinic’s resources. Working with the A.D.A.M. implementation team and its own dedicated A.D.A.M. client relationship manager, the Clinic revamped the home page to heavily promote the new consumer health information.

The A.D.A.M. Multimedia Encyclopedia added over 3,900 consumer health articles covering conditions, procedures, treatments, surgeries, tests and more. The encyclopedia further provided over 3,000 illustrations, diagrams and photos and over 120 multimedia videos to the site. Website visitors could now use the Clinic website to find the health information they needed from a local community resource they knew and could trust.

The system prominently highlighted each of the A.D.A.M. Health Centers, which include health information, illustrations, videos, tools, and news related to a key service line in one centralized location, on the home page within a rotating banner. Calling them “Lifetime of Care Centers”, each center was also made available from a drop down menu in the top navigation. This allowed the system to promote specific service lines that were of importance right from the home page. Also included on the home page is the A.D.A.M. Symptom Navigator, an interactive and engaging way for visitors to find what symptoms may mean and easily connect to health articles relevant to their conditions.

Realizing that they could also use the health content within the website to promote doctors, the system went a step further and “wrapped” the A.D.A.M. centers with featured providers and quick links to find healthcare providers within the system. Located next to each Health Center is a provider listing that includes a photo, campus location, and phone number to connect immediately to make an appointment.

In addition, the Clinic also uses Service Line Mapping within health articles to highlight specific pages on the website based on article type, further driving people to connect with its services and physicians.

THE RESULT
Today the Clinic provides has established itself as the leading provider of consumer health information in its market, and now has the ability to promote specific service lines right from the website home page. The Clinic is also able to promote physicians from the Health Centers, as well as around the A.D.A.M. Multimedia Encyclopedia articles.

Since implementing the A.D.A.M. content on its new website, the Clinic has seen traffic increase by at least 10%, as well as a continued increase in the number of people contacting Clinic doctors. A.D.A.M pages also show a higher average visitor time on page.

“We found that integrating the health information with our web pages was very easy, and even more beneficial than we could have imagined,” said Pam Parten, Product Manager of Web Applications. “Our staff appreciates that the website is there to not only educate people about their health, but to also connect them to our doctors and services. As a recognized name in healthcare, it was important that we had trusted, accurate and robust health information available to our community and patients.”

In addition to the A.D.A.M. health information available on their website, the Clinic staff has also found the A.D.A.M. QuickSheets to be an essential and useful resource. The private labeled patient education solution covering diseases, conditions, surgeries, test and wellness is available online so Clinic staff can print them out for use during an appointment or email before office visits. The solution helps increase patient satisfaction through improved understanding, and saves caregiver time through more efficient visits. Physicians and staff can even include their own individual notes and contact information.

The Clinic continues to find additional ways to utilize the A.D.A.M. content on the site. In the future, the system plans to further integrate A.D.A.M. content with physician information by using the A.D.A.M. metadata to associate physicians with specific A.D.A.M. health articles. With 42 medical specialties mapped to every article in the Multimedia Encyclopedia and In-Depth Reports, it will be yet another way to help connect people looking for health information to Clinic doctors and services.