This is the fifth and final article in our series highlighting the technological breakthroughs that shaped healthcare, marketing, and our work at Geonetric over our first 25 years in business. You can go back and read the other articles in this series, which cover 1999 – 2003, 2004 – 2008, 2009 – 2013, and 2014 – 2018. 

When looking back on the history of digital healthcare marketing and healthcare in general, you’d be hard-pressed to find a period in history that has brought more rapid change than the last five years. 

If you’re in the healthcare industry (and if you’re reading this, you probably are), you don’t need reminding of the ways the COVID-19 pandemic challenged your organization. 

However, the pandemic brought along with it technological and marketing changes that persist today and will likely remain woven into our marketing strategies for years to come. 

On top of that, these five years also brought with them a greater emphasis on mobile web functionality and a little piece of HIPAA guidance that threw us all for a loop.  

2019

On July 1, 2019, Google started indexing new sites for mobile first before indexing the desktop versions. 

This shift made it especially vital for digital marketers to ensure that any new websites they launched worked well on mobile and had quality content, images, videos, links, structured data and other metadata, in addition to functioning well for desktop users. 

“There had been a couple of design trends at different points over the years where we’d say, ‘Ok, if 60% of our traffic is mobile, we should design the mobile experience and then back into what the desktop experience is going to look like,” explained Ben Dillon, CEO of Geonetric. “We’re seeing some app usage out there, but today, we’re certainly in a place where mobile web is a dominant piece of the experience.” 

2020

The COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and served as a catalyst for many healthcare organizations to pursue digital transformation — and pivot their marketing strategies to address virus, testing and vaccine information. 

“It’s hard to wrap your head around the scope and just how major the shifts were going on,” said Dillon. “We’d have clients who said, ‘I need to put a project on hold because next week we’re opening a military-style field hospital in the parking garage, and I need to oversee that now.'” 

For many healthcare marketers, the pandemic also identified gaps in their strategies for communicating with patients. Some organizations, Dillon recalled, didn’t even have a way to send email communications to all of their patients. That had to change, and fast, as communities turned to their local health systems and hospitals for guidance. 

“For a lot of our hospitals, they became one of the central hubs of communication and information around the crisis in general. There were a bunch of things along the way that were really challenging from a communication perspective,” said Dillon. “I think marketing and communications got a seat at the table at the executive level that, in many cases, they hadn’t before that point in time because they didn’t think of communications as being a strategic asset to the organization. And suddenly, that lifeline to the community was really key.” 

2021

As the COVID-19 pandemic continued, telemedicine options grew in popularity — by April 2021, 27% of American adults age 18 and older were utilizing telehealth services. However, with the rapid expansion of telemedicine also came the challenge of how healthcare organizations could master the technology, build patient trust, and explain the benefits through marketing. 

“It was interesting to see as an industry that traditionally has thought of itself as not being particularly nimble and not really being able to adapt and innovate. We had clients with five-year plans to grow telemedicine that they were able to blow past within a few weeks once COVID-related shutdowns started,” said Dillon. “In terms of adoption of the tools and the ability to push it through multiple specialties, there was a rethinking of ‘What are the places where I actually need to go in and see you?'” 

2022

In December 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance on the use of marketing trackers, like Google Analytics or Meta Pixel, by HIPAA Covered Entities such as health systems and hospitals. 

The guidance stated that Covered Entities are “not permitted to use tracking technologies in a manner that would result in impermissible disclosures of [protected health information] to tracking technology vendors or any other violations of the HIPAA Rules.” 

This development raised the question of whether healthcare marketers could continue to use analytics to craft effective marketing messages and understand their audiences without running afoul of HIPAA. 

Earlier this year, HHS released an updated guidance that raised more questions than answers, and the American Hospital Association recently received a summary judgment in its lawsuit that claimed the guidance exceeds HHS’ authority.  

While we wait to see how things pan out, we encourage marketers not to make any knee-jerk decisions regarding their compliance tools and strategies. Instead, consider a tool like Geonetric Privacy Filter to give you peace of mind that your marketing strategies can be effective without compromising patient privacy. 

2023

Generative AI has been creeping into marketing conversations for years now, but 2023 was the first year it truly became widely available for professional workflows. Companies like Apple, Adobe, and Canva have implemented AI tools across their creative suites, while many industries have argued over the ethics of incorporating AI into their daily work. 

AI continues to be a hot topic for healthcare marketers, according to the results of our 2024 Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends Survey. Many marketers are wary of incorporating AI into their marketing efforts when they operate in such a heavily regulated industry, while others claim that it’d feel like “cheating” to use AI to generate content for their websites. 

Whether you’re on board the AI train or not, it will play a major role in the marketing landscape over the coming years — we suggest reading up on how it will impact things like search engine optimization so you can learn how to use it in tandem with your marketing tools and prepare for the rise of AI search. 

2024… and beyond

A lot has changed over Geonetric’s 25 years in business, and we anticipate even more rapid change over the next 25. If you want more insights into the future of healthcare marketing, be sure to download our 2024 Digital Healthcare Marketing Trends Survey eBook to learn how your colleagues are reacting to hot tech topics like generative AI, personalization, HIPAA compliance, and more. 

If your organization is looking for a digital marketing guide that can help you meet your marketing goals and weather whatever tech changes are coming down the road, Geonetric is here to help. Contact our team today to learn more about our marketing and web development services, Geonetric Privacy Filter, and content management systems. 

Geonetric is thrilled to announce that CEO Ben Dillon has been named the 2024 recipient of the Society for Health Care Strategy & Market Development’s (SHSMD) Leadership Excellence Award. 

The prestigious award honors leaders in healthcare marketing, communications, public relations, planning, and business development who have become standouts in their field and have demonstrated stellar achievements over the course of their careers.  

In their recommendations, the nominators for this year’s Leadership Excellence Award highlighted Ben’s decades of digital experience, thought leadership, and work helping healthcare organizations across the country adapt to healthcare and marketing trends — all of which we’re proud to have a front row seat for here at Geonetric. 

Regarding Ben’s expertise and insights in digital marketing, technology, and healthcare, nominators remarked that he’s been “an informative and friendly source of trend watching and information in an increasingly hostile and confusing landscape” and “a sherpa where we often felt caught in a storm we couldn’t control.” 

Geonetric is honored to be led by Ben, who joined the agency in 2000, just one year after it was founded. In the years since, he has served as an influential voice in the field of healthcare marketing through his speaking engagements and writings. Ben became CEO of Geonetric in 2023. 

In addition to his outstanding work at Geonetric, Ben was also a member of the SHSHMD Board of Directors from 2011 to 2019 and served as president in 2018. He has also been a part of SHSMD’s Digital Engagement Task Force, Nominating Committee, Editorial Advisory Board, Annual Conference Planning Committee, Social Media Trends Task Force, and Bridging World Core Team. 

One award nominator who served on the SHSMD board with Ben praised his “leadership, commitment to advancing the profession, and how he lives the Society’s values of collaboration, accountability, respect, excellence and innovation.”  

Nominators also appreciate Ben’s “candor, sincerity, inclusiveness, and dry sense of humor” in the way he shares industry updates, even when addressing “the most complex and challenging topics of the industry.” 

In addition to his work with SHSMD, Ben is also a 2022 Healthcare Internet Hall of Fame inductee and an eHealthcare Strategy & Trends editorial advisory board member. 

Outside of healthcare marketing, Ben is also a co-founder, board member, and mentor for the Iowa Startup Accelerator — now known as NewBo.Co — a non-profit expanding the entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem in Iowa. 

This well-deserved honor from SHSMD not only celebrates Ben’s outstanding professional achievements but also underscores the invaluable impact he has had on digital marketing, healthcare, and the Geonetric team. 

From all of us at Geonetric, congratulations, Ben, on this prestigious recognition! 

In honor of Geonetric’s 25th anniversary, we’re sharing the stories and successes of just a few of our healthcare clients across the United States. Some have been with us for decades, others just a few years; some are major health systems, others just one standalone hospital. But one common thread ties them all together: Geonetric has helped them take their digital marketing programs to new heights.

Hartford, CT-based Hartford HealthCare (HHC) ranks as one of the largest health systems in Connecticut, seeing more than 23,000 patients daily in more than 185 cities across the state. HHC comprises more than 500 healthcare facilities, including four behavioral health centers, two physician organizations, senior care services, and seven acute care hospitals, several of which have been serving their communities for over a century.

Search strategies

HHC has partnered with Geonetric since early 2018, initially contracting with us to work on search engine optimization (SEO) across its more than 30 websites after a new website launch led to a natural dip in organic traffic and search rankings.

“Our websites weren’t ranking as well as we would like on Google, and we knew that having an agency dedicated to SEO would be important,” said Nicole Spagnoletti, Director of Digital Marketing at HHC. “It was a lot to manage on our own, with our in-house team dedicating time to maintaining and expanding them as our system grew over time.”

When our partnership first began, our long-term strategy for HHC was to integrate organic SEO with search engine marketing (SEM), and shift toward organic SEO over time. But rebuilding those rankings wasn’t something that could happen overnight — it requires a significant amount of effort, resources and time.

To bridge the gap between where HHC’s rankings were in 2018 with where we wanted them to reach, we recommended a short-term paid marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) ad strategy. With this initial strategy in place, HHC and our team had the time to take a step back and focus on building up core competencies.

Those strategies, like any successful marketing program, evolved over time to fit HHC’s needs. But the solid foundation of SEO success — technical SEO, on-page SEO, on search results page SEO, and off-page SEO — have always been at the center of the work we do together.

In the years since our partnership began, we’ve helped reimagine HHC’s entire approach to digital marketing with a new SEO strategy to help recoup their lost traffic and search rankings.

Our team has also implemented SEM campaign best practices to bring their PPC ads back on track after “cannibalization” — ads competing with other Hartford campaigns and reducing their impact — led to an inefficient use of the money invested in each campaign.

A significant part of these initial SEO and SEM projects was identifying and remedying “low-hanging fruit” — minor fixes we could make to achieve results quickly — and ensuring all pages were functioning and tagged correctly so Google and other search engines could find and scan them.

We also identified the campaigns that were causing and reassessed and optimized them for new keywords and audiences.

Partnership results

Within the first nine months of launching HHC’s revamped paid campaigns, we saw a 57.55% increase in conversions, a 98.39% increase in impressions, a 71.75% increase in conversion rate, and a 31.82% decrease in cost per conversion.

On the SEO side, year-over-year results from 2018 to 2019 show a 59% increase in conversion growth, a 67% increase in conversion rate, and a 30% decrease in cost per conversion.

In the time since launching those initial campaigns, our team has continued to fine-tune HHC’s SEO strategy and paid efforts through new keyword-optimized content, metadata and Google Tag Manager management.

“In all of the projects we work on with Geonetric, we get such wonderful feedback from our colleagues about how easy they are to work with, how clear their expectations are, and how sound their strategy is,” said Spagnoletti. “If we ever have questions about their strategy, it’s a great conversation and learning opportunity.”

Prioritizing privacy

We also worked with HHC to implement Geonetric Privacy Filter, which allows healthcare organizations to use Google Analytics and craft effective marketing strategies while maintaining HIPAA compliance.

Spagnoletti recalled that a highlight of implementing Geonetric Privacy Filter was consistently feeling like a priority to our team.

“This particular project had a lot of visibility, and we needed answers in a clear, concise and timely manner, and they delivered,” she said.

A true partnership

Another factor that has kept HHC’s partnership with Geonetric strong over the years is our meticulous attention to detail and commitment to staying up-to-date on the latest healthcare and marketing industry trends. When asked to sum up our relationship in one word, Spagnoletti chose “authentic.”

“They are proactive in communicating with us when there are changes in the industry and offer solid solutions without overselling,” said Spagnoletti. “The best thing about working with the team is that I trust they operate with their clients’ interests in mind. Geonetric is a true partner, beyond just the services they provide. We appreciate having them as an extension of our in-house team.”

Ready to experience the Geonetric difference?

Geonetric has 25 years of experience helping healthcare organizations of all sizes meet their marketing goals and stay on the cutting edge of healthcare and digital trends.

If your team is ready to take the first step to building a marketing partnership that delivers results, contact us today!

This is the fourth article in our series highlighting the technological breakthroughs that shaped healthcare, marketing, and our work at Geonetric over our first 25 years in business. Read the first articles, which cover 1999 – 2003, 2004 – 2008, and 2009 – 2013. 

Geonetric’s 15th year in business saw the rapid rise of internet-connected mobile devices and their use by consumers to look up healthcare-related information. 

This was a crucial time for healthcare organizations and our agency to take a closer look at how websites appeared and functioned on mobile devices. They didn’t just have to look good on a smaller, narrower screen — they had to be easily navigable, and offer quick solutions for patients and visitors on the go.  

Longstanding technology like Adobe’s Flash software platform, which was used to create animations and dynamic experiences in desktop and mobile applications, became casualties in the move from desktop browsing to mobile, especially as Apple’s iPhone gained in popularity. 

“There was some shedding of technology that was really common on the desktop because more and more people were coming with mobile devices,” explained Geonetric CEO Ben Dillon. “These were all steps along the road to say, ‘Ok, the phone can actually be a fully functional front end for this internet thing.'”  

2014

Mobile usage surpassed desktop browser traffic for the first time in 2014. As the amount of time people spent on their desktop and laptop computers drops in comparison to time spent browsing via smartphone, the need for organizations to take a mobile-first approach to marketing and website design became more apparent.  

“We were very early in the movement of rethinking how to build these sites so that they work not just on a desktop but on mobile devices as well,” said Dillon. “Later, we started talking about mobile-first design and design everywhere.” 

(Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see an infographic we created in 2012 — well before smartphone usage overtook browser traffic — forecasting the future of mobile browsing, social media, and how healthcare consumers engage online.)

2015

In line with the growing trend of mobile internet usage, Google began ranking pages with poor mobile experiences lower on its search results page. 

The reasoning, according to Google, was so “users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.” 

This move was a further push for organizations to ensure their websites were responsive for visitors regardless of the device they were using to look for information. 

“It certainly had a huge impact. We’re in a place today where mobile web is a dominant piece of the digital experience,” said Dillon.  

2016

Google took its “mobile-first” mindset a step further in 2016 by removing ads from the sidebar. Ads appeared above and below natural search results, allowing search results pages to look similar across mobile phones, desktop and laptop computers, and tablets.  

This year also marked the launch of Facebook’s live video platform, which allowed individual users and organizational accounts alike the opportunity to connect and engage directly with consumers through streaming video. From a healthcare perspective, provider organizations could utilize live video to stream online classes, host virtual hiring events, provide patients and visitors with news updates about the organization, and even stream live surgeries! 

2017

The number of internet-connected devices exceeded the global population for the first time in 2017 — an estimated 8.4 billion connected devices were used that year, compared to 7.5 billion people.  

While the one billion difference between internet devices and people seemed staggering at the time, by 2024, more than 18 billion internet-connected devices were in use.  

2018

The year 2018 ushered in discussions around personal data use and social media following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a British consulting firm revealed that it had harvested the personal data of as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app and used it for political advertising purposes without users’ consent.  

Facebook was fined $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission as a result of the scandal, and reminded marketers of the importance of privacy in the data collected and used in advertising — something  that, more recently, Geonetric Privacy Filter was designed to safeguard. 

What’s next?

Our final installment of this 25th anniversary technology blog series will be published in two weeks, covering 2019 through 2024. 

No matter what the future holds for mobile devices, social media, and healthcare marketing, Geonetric is ready with a host of website design, software, and marketing solutions to help your organization stay on top of the latest trends. 

Contact us today to learn how we can help your organization navigate the future of healthcare marketing! 

In honor of Geonetric’s 25th anniversary, we’re sharing the stories and successes of just a few of our healthcare clients across the United States. Some have been with us for decades, others just a few years; some are major health systems, others just one standalone hospital. But one common thread ties them all together: Geonetric has helped them take their digital marketing programs to new heights.

San Antonio-based University Health was founded in 1917 as Bexar County’s first public hospital. In the decades since, it’s grown to become the third-largest public health system in the state of Texas, with two teaching hospitals, a Level I trauma center, and dozens of other locations across the San Antonio metro area.

University Health joined forces with Geonetric in 2019 when the organization needed a strategy and design partner for a website redesign and a new content hub to host its blogs, videos, and educational content. University Health was working with another agency at the time to handle the actual development of the new site, but Geonetric’s healthcare expertise and focus on measurable results impressed the team.

“We really liked how they approach new projects, especially that redesign, and that they are healthcare-specific. They understood our audience,” explained Selene Mejia, Digital Marketing Director for University Health.

After the successful launch of its new website, University Health continued working with Geonetric to add components and features to the website, like additional content and a dedicated pediatrics microsite.

Searching for results

In 2021, Geonetric assisted University Health with a new project: boosting the return on investment of its pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

In particular, the University Health team needed help building on a previous search engine marketing (SEM) campaign targeting two of its pediatric locations to include 13 additional clinics. After Geonetric stepped in, the first year of the revamped campaign led to a 170% increase in conversions and a 46% decrease in the cost per click.

While Mejia had worked with previous agencies on SEM campaigns before, Geonetric’s commitment to continuous improvement and staying on the cutting edge of search technology stood out.

“We admire their proactive approach in every campaign they handle for us,” Mejia said. “Every two weeks, they introduce fresh ideas to enhance our paid advertising campaigns through A/B testing, adjusting keywords, and exploring new platform features.”

Geonetric was originally tasked with managing six of University Health’s campaigns for 15 months. After seeing the initial results, Geonetric took over four additional campaigns as well as managing the system’s SEO and personalization approach.

Promoting primary care

Today, a primary focus of Geonetric’s work with University Health is an ongoing SEM campaign focused on increasing awareness of its primary care services and boosting appointment requests.

Geonetric’s strategy for this primary care campaign embraced Google’s automated bidding system, maximizing conversions while staying within University Health’s fixed budget. The team also leveraged responsive search ads that adapt to the user and show them the most relevant message possible to help connect new patients with the primary care services they require.

While this campaign has been ongoing, a series of experiments in late 2023 — two years after it first launched — led to a record-setting number of appointment requests in 2024.

“Service line leaders are pleased with the overall results,” Mejia noted.

Looking to the future

Next up for University Health’s partnership with Geonetric are new SEM campaigns, including one focused on the back-to-school season and another on pulmonology.

In addition to future projects, Mejia also appreciates Geonetric’s proactive approach when it comes to breaking developments in the healthcare marketing and technology fields.

“I have worked with other agencies, and usually it was me bringing those kinds of things to them, like ‘Oh, have you heard about this?'” Mejia said. “In this case, [Geonetric] brings that information to us. I particularly value Ben and his team for keeping us informed about HHS guidelines regarding analytics and HIPAA.”

“They consistently innovate to ensure our users have good experiences, even when factors are beyond their control. For instance, Brad personally called our phone number to verify call functionality after noticing a discrepancy in analytics,” Mejia recalled. “For partnerships, we look for someone who can keep us up to date and at the forefront, and Geonetric does that. We’ve been consistently impressed by how they help us in staying competitive.”

Ready to experience the Geonetric difference?

Geonetric has 25 years of digital marketing know-how and healthcare-specific experience ready to go to work for you. If your organization is ready to supercharge its marketing efforts, connect with us today!

In this webinar, Geonetric CEO Ben Dillon shares a snapshot of today’s healthcare marketing space with the results of our 2024 Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends Survey, which includes input from hundreds of healthcare organizations across the country. He also highlights what leading healthcare organizations are doing to stay ahead of the curve and where we expect marketers to invest their budgets in the coming years.

This is the third article in our series highlighting the technological breakthroughs that shaped healthcare, marketing, and our work at Geonetric over our first 25 years in business. Read the first articles, which cover 1999 – 2003 and 2004 – 2008. 

As Geonetric entered its 10th year in business, the online landscape had evolved rapidly to something that barely resembled what it was when we were first founded.  

People were chronicling their lives and forming communities on social media, online reviews were changing how consumers interacted with their healthcare providers, and smartphones put the power of search engines in users’ pockets. 

Easier access to search engines on the go meant marketers needed to put more thought than ever before into how users found their websites, and what they saw once they clicked through. 

2009 

In 2009, Google launched its Real Time search functionality, which automatically incorporated the latest results for a keyword in a dedicated section of the search results page.  

Real Time didn’t simply funnel any new post or page into its results — Google’s search ranking algorithm still came into play there — but it marked another step forward for search engines’ ability to offer users the latest answers instantly.  

2010 

The accessibility of smart devices continued to grow in 2010 with the launch of Apple’s iPad. While not the first tablet computer, the iPad’s innovative touchscreen helped set it apart and paved the way for smart devices that had characteristics of both a laptop computer and a phone. 

Geonetric launched one of the first responsively designed sites in healthcare, and to this day, we design and build responsive websites for all screen sizes so healthcare organizations’ sites look fantastic no matter how users visit them. This is especially important in 2024, with 92.3% of internet users accessing websites on a mobile device, compared to 65.6% who use laptops or desktop computers. 

Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computer platform, was also released in 2010. Today, its broad range of services includes analytics, virtual computing, networking, storage, and more to help organizations manage their technology tools. 

2011 

Schema markup, or structured data that helps search engines better understand a webpage’s content, was first introduced in 2011. While it doesn’t have a direct impact on search engine performance, it can help websites stand out on results pages by displaying rich content like images, star ratings, publish date, and other important information about the page. 

“[It was] the idea that in addition to just having content on the page, you would also try to spoon-feed the search engines a little bit about what this page is about,” explained Geonetric CEO Ben Dillon. 

For example, a search result for a recipe may bring up photos of the finished product, how people reviewed that recipe, the number of reviews and cooking time. A search for a pair of shoes might deliver the price, the buyer rating, if the shoes are in stock and how long a delivery would take. 

Apple also launched its Siri voice assistant in 2011, kickstarting a shift toward voice search and the need for marketers to think like a voice searcher when creating content. Less than a decade later, 41% of adults reported using voice search daily. 

2012 

Content marketing wasn’t exactly a new concept, but by 2012, it had reached a tipping point where it was an essential component of any successful marketing program.  

This shift was driven in part by social media, search optimization, and users’ desire for content that supports their purchases. Many organizations took this time to capitalize on consumers’ trust in content over direct advertising by dedicating entire departments to content marketing. 

2013 

In 2013 Google made major changes to its Hummingbird search engine algorithm, marking the most significant changes to the way it delivered search results since 2001. This update placed more of an emphasis on natural, conversational-sounding searches and the context around them than individual keywords. 

For marketers and website developers, this update required a move toward more “human” writing and website navigation that didn’t rely on forced keywords. 

“It seems like a never-ending thing to figure out — how do we play with this tool that is realistically the home page for all of our sites?” said Geonetric CEO Ben Dillon. “More people are starting at Google than are starting at the home page of our healthcare websites when they’re engaging with that content.” 

Healthcare websites were not impacted as significantly as other industries since many organizations were already favoring educational content over keyphrase-packed articles, Dillon noted. 

“Healthcare sites have been a little less volatile around algorithm changes than some other industries that went further down the pathway of sacrificing elements of readability or understandability or experience in order to get more SEO,” Dillon said. 

What’s next? 

Our 25th anniversary technology blog series continues in two weeks, covering 2014 through 2018 and the “mobile-first” movement.  

Looking to get in on the ground floor of the latest marketing technology trends before they take off? Our expert team at Geonetric is here to help!

We’ve assisted healthcare organizations in creating marketing programs that stay ahead of the curve for 25 years. Let us help your team prepare for the next 25 — contact us today to get started! 

In honor of Geonetric’s 25th anniversary, we’re sharing the stories and successes of just a few of our healthcare clients across the United States. Some have been with us for decades, others just a few years; some are major health systems, others just one standalone hospital. But one common thread ties them all together: Geonetric has helped them take their digital marketing programs to new heights.

St. Bernards Healthcare is a Jonesboro, AR-based health system that traces its roots back nearly 125 years to a six-bedroom house converted into a hospital during a local malaria fever epidemic. Today, St. Bernards has more than 100 locations and 4,200 employees serving 625,000 patients across Arkansas and Missouri.

The health system has partnered with Geonetric since 2022, when it dedicated the funding to prioritize its digital presence and reached out for help overhauling a website that was “a glorified Word document,” according to Mackenzie Thomason, Website & Digital Coordinator at St. Bernards.

Thomason’s team couldn’t customize their website much at the time and needed assistance completely rewriting its content, streamlining its search capabilities, optimizing content for search engines, and adding a design that fit their storied brand. They also felt their current site wasn’t genuinely representing who St. Bernards was and failed to provide a sophisticated experience that was impressive and useful for both internal and external audiences.

Geonetric’s mix of healthcare expertise and knowledge of healthcare marketing trends made the agency an easy choice for a partner who could take their website to the next level.

A caring content journey

One major goal of the website redesign was creating a digital home that met the needs of patients, employees, job seekers, and donors alike. Part of reaching that goal meant moving the St. Bernards site from Drupal to Geonetric’s proprietary VitalSite® content management system, which allowed for improved structure and organization.

St. Bernards previous website content had been described as a “rabbit hole” of unclear, outdated and hard-to-find information. Geonetric’s content team worked with dozens of St. Bernards stakeholders to rewrite or create new content for 175 pages, with an emphasis on writing in a way that was easy to understand for any users’ health literacy level and communicated how the system’s services could improve patients’ lives.

“We met with most of our main service line doctors in content planning meetings, and I felt like they appreciated their concerns being heard and then showing them the final product before we went live,” Thomason said.

One highlight of the new site includes revamped services pages, which showcase St. Bernards’ service lines in an easy-to-navigate menu so patients and their families can easily narrow in on the issue they’re seeking treatment for. On the individual pages, users can find information about specific conditions that fall under that service line, treatment options, answers to frequently asked questions like when to seek treatment and where treatment will occur, and profiles of the providers they’ll work with.

“A big piece of this was making sure our content truly reflected all of what our providers do,” explained Thomason. “It was a needed change within our organization, and we can tell the benefits of it today through our analytics across the board.”

Real-world results

In the first 30 days following the launch of the new St. Bernards website, views of the site jumped 55%, with a 25% increase in total users.

The new healthcare services pages saw views increase by 60%, with a 31% increase in total users. The time users spend engaged with these pages also increased by 49%.

Aside from the numbers, Thomason has also received fantastic feedback on the new site from team members, including the hospital administrator, who continues to highlight the new site in his public presentations.

“[We got] so much great feedback. Every single one of our internal stakeholders was very impressed,” Thomason said. “People within our organization have approached me and repeatedly said, ‘The new website looks so good’ or ‘It is so easy to find what I need!'”

Trust & teamwork

St. Bernards’ redesigned website content earned a MarCom Awards Honorable Mention for Web Content based on its quality, creativity, and excellence.

In the years since, Geonetric has also helped St. Bernards move their forms to Formulate, VitalSite’s self-service form creation feature, and create a timeline in celebration of the system’s upcoming 125th anniversary. Geonetric also helps keep the St. Bernards team up-to-date on the latest marketing trends and technology.

“Everyone I have had the chance to work with in our complete website redesign has been a top-tier communicator. Honest, timely, helpful. It makes my job so much easier knowing I have a few direct people I can contact no matter the question or situation,” Thomason said. “From a new website launch to post-launch, we have continued re-working and creating multiple projects together. Our goal is to always improve where we can. I see Geonetric as an extension of our team!”

Ready to experience the Geonetric difference?

If your organization could use a digital partner with 25 years of experience, a healthcare-specific content management system, and a team that’s always keeping tabs on the latest in healthcare digital marketing, let’s talk. Contact Geonetric today to learn more about how we can help your organization!

This is the second article in our series highlighting the technological breakthroughs that shaped healthcare, marketing, and our work at Geonetric over our first 25 years in business. Read the first article, which covers 1999 – 2003, here. 

The year 2004 marked Geonetric’s fifth anniversary as an agency, and the third year in its shift to working primarily with healthcare organizations.  

The groundwork for the technology Geonetric would come to rely on to provide digital marketing services to its clients — search engine optimization, search engine advertising and blog content management systems — was set and evolving quickly.  

Social media was in its infancy, with sites like MySpace, Friendster, and LiveJournal hitting the web and allowing more people than ever before to connect via the internet.  

Internet technology was also becoming more accessible to everyday computer users, allowing them to shape the content they wanted to see and share their thoughts online.  

2004 

Facebook — the social media platform with perhaps the most significant impact on healthcare marketing — launched in 2004. Healthcare organizations didn’t take to it right away, as it was limited to college students at first and strictly individuals after.  

However, as the site gained steam and healthcare marketers saw its potential, they found workarounds to connect with their patients on the fledgling network. 

“The idea of an organization having a Facebook page was a real challenge for a long time. They wanted these [pages] to be people, so you had to have a ‘brand ambassador,'” explained Geonetric CEO Ben Dillon.  

This year also saw the popularization of the term “Web 2.0,” which described a shift in websites to allow more user-generated content, ease of use, and interoperability for end users.  

“This idea that it was OK for normal people to have opinions and they would be out there on the internet… [we thought] are we even going to have corporate sites anymore, or is it all going to be user-generated content?” Dillon said. “This was sort of new and scary. A lot of brands were working hard to encourage their consumers to share information. It was a radically new way of thinking.” 

2005

In 2005, Google began offering personalized search results to a limited number of users. These searches delivered results not just based on web page relevance, but also on websites the user visited through previous search sessions.  

While personalized search wouldn’t be applied to all users until 2009, this development paved the way for more targeted personalization and search engine rankings, making a significant impact on the way healthcare marketers gauged how their sites were faring in search results. 

“Before the personalized results, you could just search on the term, and you could find where you were,” Dillon explained. Once that shifted, getting to a place where we had tools that could tell us how we were doing and could track it over time — that was pretty challenging.” 

2006 

Google Analytics first launched in November 2005, but demand for the new tool was so overwhelming that signups were suspended after just one week until the official widescale release in 2006. Prior to the launch of Google Analytics — which was and remains free to use — analytics tracking systems cost money, meaning many healthcare organizations “flew blind” rather than invest in understanding their analytics, Dillon explained. 

“Google Analytics was a game changer, a lot of the tools you either had to run on your own server somewhere or they were very, very expensive,” Dillon said. “Having it as a free offering for the majority of people was beautiful, it absolutely changed the game.” 

2007 

The year 2007 brought two tech releases that would come to have a major impact on healthcare marketers — the iPhone and Google Reviews. 

Apple’s iPhone was the first mobile phone to use multi-touch technology, which allows users to navigate across the screen at more than one point of contact (using a pinching motion to zoom in, etc.), and ushered in a new era of apps and constant connectivity. It also helped further the popularity of the smartphone, driving the need for marketers to consider mobile responsiveness while designing websites. 

Google Reviews gave consumers a voice and the ability for user-generated reviews to appear whenever someone searched for a particular business or organization. While this development provided consumers with a new avenue for sharing their thoughts — good and bad — about a particular healthcare organization, it also caused new headaches for marketers. 

“They felt like they had control of their brand, and they didn’t want this place where other people could post about them,” Dillon recalled. “When one of our clients saw a review they didn’t like, they’d reach out and say ‘Can you take this down? We don’t want this on the internet anymore.’ And that’s not how it works.” 

The rise of online reviews also spurred organizations to take a more proactive approach to online reviews, encouraging people who have had a great experience at their facility to share that online. 

“The number of reviews for healthcare organizations tends to be pretty low, and those reviews tend to skew negative,” Dillon said. “It’s still a point of discussion with health systems. Do you have a program where you’re cultivating reviews? Do you have a kiosk on their way out the door where they can submit a review before they leave the building? The best way to battle against a low score is to get a representative sample of lots of people engaged with the organization.” 

2008 

The first commercially released Android smartphone, the HTC Dream, was launched in September 2008 and served as the first open competitor to other smartphones like the iPhone and BlackBerry. This release helped solidify smartphones’ staying power and the trend toward mobile-friendly web experiences. 

What’s next? 

Our 25th anniversary tech blog series continues in two weeks with a look at 2009 through 2013, and some major changes to how users and marketers interact with Google’s search engine. 

Need a boost in how your organization is using today’s marketing tech trends? Let Geonetric lend a hand! Our 25 years of experience means we’re well equipped to get you up to speed on the latest marketing technology — and prepare you for what’s coming next. Contact our team today to get started! 

The ongoing HIPAA online tracking guidance saga took a turn last week when a Texas judge issued a summary judgment in favor of the American Hospital Association declaring the guidance as unlawful and exceeding HHS’s authority.  

While some pundits are quick to believe that this is the end of the story, the answer might not be so simple.  

Healthcare organizations have been wrestling with HHS’s guidance on the Use of Online Tracking Technologies by HIPAA Covered Entities and Business Associates which was released in December 2022 and then updated in March 2024. For a more complete overview of the guidance, check out our series on this topic. 

At a high level, the most dramatic implications of the guidance were twofold: 

• The combination of an IP address and the URL of a page relating to health information such as a symptom, condition, search for a provider, or online appointment forms would be considered Individually Identifiable Health Information (IIHI)/Protected Health Information (PHI). The summary judgment refers to this IP/URL pair as the “Proscribed Combination.” 

• Healthcare entities needed to consider any visit to their digital properties to be doing so related to the past, present or future care. While HHS softened this language in the 2024 update to the guidance, the actions required to meet with the standard did not change as a result. 

Overview of the summary judgment 

Much of the 31-page summary judgment wrestles with somewhat esoteric procedural issues surrounding the case, such as if the plaintiffs have standing and if such informal guidance documents are subject to judicial review.  To sum it up: the judge explains that the case is valid, that he has the authority to act here, and that a summary judgment is warranted. 

In the end, the judge declared unlawful the fact that the Prescribed Combination (IP address and URL) is IIHI and effectively rolls back the guidance.  

What does this mean for healthcare organizations’ efforts to improve their privacy posture in response to the guidance? 

Healthcare organizations should not simply abandon the new tools and tactics they’ve adopted to better protect consumer privacy. Even with reduced regulatory risks, this event should act as a wake-up call for all of us to put consumer privacy first.  

There are a number of reasons to continue down the consumer privacy path: 

1. It’s likely this isn’t the last we’ll hear about these issues from HHS. For starters, they have the option to appeal the judgment. And while the judgment rolls back the guidance, it denied the AHA’s request for a permanent injunction on this matter. So, the agency could pursue a similar set of rules like those imposed by the 2022 guidance by following a more appropriate rulemaking path (as we’ve always believed they should). We would expect this process to include a detailed explanation of the new rules and their legal obligations, an open comment period, and a timeline for implementation by Covered Entities and Business Associates.
2. Regulatory compliance is only one of the risks healthcare organizations have faced on these issues, and it’s less clear if this decision will have much impact on the ever-growing list of class action suits claiming breaches of consumers’ health information. Many of these lawsuits were in the works prior to the 2022 guidance, so its revocation is no guarantee that they will also go away. Many of the class action suits also involve state privacy laws where the bar may be different than under current HIPAA legislation. 
3. The judgment leaves open the potential that, in some circumstances, sharing data with non-HIPAA-compliant organizations from your web properties could still represent a breach under the HIPAA Privacy Rule. This could apply to some patient portals, for example, where online interactions are presumed to be for the logged-in individual. There are also less obvious scenarios that could prove problematic. The summary judgment cites the scenario where an organization “greets visitors with a dropdown box requesting their subjective motive for visiting the page”. While the summary judgment notes that this seems unlikely, this could be the case on websites that have a visitor survey or when the visitor selects their role (patient, caregiver, provider, jobseeker, etc.) from a list for the purpose of personalizing their online experience.  
4. Lastly, protecting consumer privacy is important to all of us and a robust process to do so must be a priority going forward. 

Where does this leave us? 

Even if the guidance doesn’t re-emerge in some form, this has been an eye-opener for all of us due to the sheer amount of information being shared with third parties. We encourage you to proceed forward with the same level of caution and oversight that you’ve been applying to marketing technology decisions over the past year and a half: 

• Continue to vet tools and vendors through your data governance and vendor assessment processes to understand what information they’re receiving and the strength of their regulatory compliance processes. 

• Don’t make any knee-jerk moves when it comes to the changes you’ve made to improve compliance until we better understand what the status quo is likely to look like on these issues. 

• Keep the dialogue going between marketing, IT, legal and compliance to clearly articulate your organization’s position related to these health consumer privacy issues. 

Geonetric will continue to share information and insights that you can use to help your organization make important HPIAA-related decisions. If you could use assistance regarding your organization’s compliance goals or how Geonetric Privacy Filter can help, reach out to our team today!