Archive for the ‘Medical Website Design’ Category

Website & Patient Portal: What’s the Difference?

by on December 28th, 2010

One of the most striking points of confusion I’ve encountered is understanding the relationship between your website — often called a medical practice website — and your patient portal.  My goal for this blog post is to officially set the record straight.

Your Website
Your website is pretty much what you think of when someone says “just visit my website.”  Its most distinguishing feature is that no username or password is required to visit your website.  You simply type in www.YourPracticeWebsite.com, and up pops all the content.  All medical practice websites today have the basics — profiles of the providers, locations with directions, accepted insurances, medical services, and some general information about the practice.  Many medical practice websites also have more interactive features like patient education, online appointment requests, online bill pay, and a blog.  Again, these features do not require a username or password.

Your Website is Primarily about Marketing
Ultimately, your website is really meant to play a marketing role in your practice.  It communicates what you do, it showcases the talents of your doctors, and it encourages people to make an appointment.  To see a good example, check out http://www.azfeet.com.  This entire site is pretty much engineered to help new patients learn about the practice, and when they’re ready, to make an appointment.  The site’s usefulness is measured in terms of how many online appointment requests and how many new patients it generates.

Other clients use their site for patient education or interactivity, but in my experience the overriding goal of the public website is appearing fresh to existing patients and attracting new ones.

Your Patient Portal
A patient portal is a special secure website your patients visit to do online what they used to only be able to do by phone.  This includes things like:

  • requesting an appointment
  • paying a bill
  • requesting an Rx refill
  • receiving lab results
  • viewing upcoming appointments
  • viewing their outstanding balance
  • registering for their first visit
  • viewing their medical record

The common theme among all these items is that they are specific to a particular patient. The patient portal has to know who you are before it can reveal medical record information to you, or let you renew a prescription.  This is the single-most important difference between a patient portal and a website.  A patient portal knows who you are.  A website doesn’t know anything about you.

Based on this one requirement — that the patient portal has to know who you are — companies like Omedix have created an entire infrastructure to allow patients to create accounts and practices to verify those accounts.  Patients must then identify themselves by logging in with a username and password.  Since they want to see private information about themselves and since this information is “Protected Health Information” as defined by HIPAA, the patient portal has to be secure, log access to the patient’s medical records, and meet several other criteria.

The Relationship Between Your Website and Your Patient Portal
At the end of the day, this is the simplest thing in the world.  The only relationship between your website and your patient portal is that your website should link to your patient portal.  And that’s it!

When Omedix builds websites, we often make a point of promoting the features of the patient portal on the website, but at the end of the day, we’re still just linking to the patient portal.

Summary
- Your website doesn’t know who you are when you visit it.
- Everyone who visits your website has the exact same experience.
- Your patient portal requires the patient to log in.
- Your patient portal starts by replacing phone calls.
- Then it goes on to give an “online healthcare experience”
- The only relationship between your website and your patient portal is a link
- However, you should also use your site to heavily promote the portal

Screen Resolution and the Web

by on December 3rd, 2010

“Why does our new site you designed for us look so HUGE on my screen?!”

This is one of the most common questions/concerns that clients have during the design phase of each medical website that Omedix creates. My goal in this post is to address this common concern and explain why our designs may appear “abnormally large” on some home/office computers.

How does screen resolution affect what I see on the web?

The reason our designs are visually larger than many has to do with screen resolution. Currently, there are about 10-15 screen resolutions that are being used in today’s computer screens. Some internet users are viewing the web at very high resolutions (i.e., 1920×1200 pixels, as seen on some of the new MacBook Pro laptop computers). For these users, average-sized images and text on the web appear small. Other users view the web at small resolutions (i.e., 1024×768 pixels). For these users, average-sized images and text on the web appear much larger and fill a larger percentage of their screen’s overall space.

Why are Omedix websites larger than others?

Based on our own observations, many medical practices use computers with smaller resolutions to view the web. So, if you – as an Omedix client – view the shiny new design we’ve created for your practice and are surprised and/or dissatisfied with how large the site appears on your screen, you may want to consider a few things first:

  1. We design websites with your patients in mind. According to a January 2010 survey done by w3schools.com, a well-known online resource on web standards, only 20% of internet users are currently browsing the web using 1024×768 pixel screen resolutions. 76% of internet users are browsing the web using screens of larger resolutions. So, just remember, your office computer may display the website somewhat larger, but the chances are that the vast majority of your patients are seeing the website at a normal size.
  2. Modern web design is typically larger because screen resolutions have grown larger. Back during the beginning of the millennium, the most common screen resolution was 800×600 pixels. Therefore, websites were designed to cater to this common resolution. If one were to look at a website designed in 2001 on a modern computer screen, the website would likely appear tiny and, in some cases, unreadable.
  3. Screen resolutions will continue to grow. The last thing you want is to see developments in computer hardware cause your still-new website to become quickly outdated. If we designed your site to cater to a small screen resolution, you may be looking for another re-design within 2 years. We design your website to keep up with ever-changing technology.
  4. Larger websites are more immersive. The web is growing into a medium that can be highly immersive. The simple fact is: larger websites generally make a more profound impact on its viewers. Think of it as the difference between watching your favorite action film on your 32″ LCD television at home versus watching the same movie at the IMAX theater.
  5. Users know to scroll. Having a larger website means that more information drops below the “fold” on smaller-resolution screens. Not to worry, though. It is actually part of web users’ common vocabularies to immediately scroll down after loading any website. So, for those people still using a 1024×768 screen resolution, some content may be hidden when a page first loads, but all it takes is a couple flicks of the mouse wheel to find it!

To Sum it All Up…

If a website looks too large on your screen, it probably means that your screen resolution is smaller than average. The overwhelming majority of users will see the site at a normal size. Omedix will design your site in order to be most effective with the highest percentage of people!

Five Reasons to Try a Different Web Browser

by on October 29th, 2010

Life is always better with choices. Coke or Pepsi. Disneyland or Disney World. Football or futbol. Not all are created equally, but having choices allows you to make the best decision for yourself.

The same holds true for your web browser, though many people don’t treat it that way.

Most people using Internet Explorer aren’t doing so by choice. It’s the default browser packaged with Microsoft Windows, and therefore the easiest to use for the folks without a preference.

And that’s the problem. Given a choice between Coke and Pepsi, most people would prefer one over the other. Why should your web browser be any different?

The only way to truly develop a preference is to experience the alternative. Luckily, all of the major web browsers are available free-of-charge.

With that in mind, here are five reasons to try a browser other than Internet Explorer.

  1. HTML5/CSS3 – HTML is the markup language of the Internet, and CSS is used to style said markup into beautiful and functional websites. HTML5 and CSS3 are just the current iterations of each language. Why is this important? Both updates expand functionality, making the web simpler in both development and usage. HTML5/CSS3 are supported in Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera, but not currently in IE8.
  2. User experience – Each web browser brings different elements together to create a unique user experience. Firefox has a great library of add-ons to increase browser functionality (like being able to update Twitter from the address bar). Chrome is extremely fast, and integrates beautifully with Google’s other free services (like syncing my favorites to my Google account across multiple computers). Safari brings Apple’s sense of design and functionality to the PC.
  3. Web standards – Put simply, web standards make my job as a developer much easier. It means that when I code a website, it’ll look the same in Firefox as it will in Chrome or Safari. While IE 8 is much better in the standards department, it still has some large shortcomings (see reason #1). With IE 9, Microsoft has promised to embrace web standards even further. But if history is any indicator, other browsers will be moving on to something bigger and better by the time Microsoft is close to catching up. As IE’s market share continues to drop, users could continue to find themselves on the outside looking in.
  4. Security – This is mostly for the 17% of you (according to some metrics) still using IE 6, a browser first released in 2001! I’m assuming that you’re forced to use IE 6 at work or in some other controlled environment where people are overly concerned about security or support for legacy software. Ironically, because of its age and dwindling support, IE 6 is the least secure of any major browser. Please upgrade, even if it’s to IE 7 or 8.
  5. The Upgrade Process – One of the nice things about using any IE alternative is that the browser will notify you as soon as there’s an available update. It’s more convenient than IE’s updates, which are pushed through the Windows patching system.  People aren’t great at updating Windows, especially on older operating systems like XP. On top of that, IE’s development cycle is tied to OS releases, which is part of the reason IE is continually behind the curve in terms of new functionality.

Hopefully you’ve found at least one reason to test a new browser. Don’t worry, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you adapt.

Remember that you can run multiple browsers on your computer, meaning that you can test drive another browser without messing up IE. That way, in the event that IE remains your favorite browser, you can easily transition back.

But I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen.

Here are links to our two favorite browsers. Download them for free and try them out:

And if you’re feeling loyal, check out the IE 9 Beta.

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