Sophisticated Provider Directory Connects Patients and Providers

“People are drawn to Bronson as the leading health system in the region, but determining which provider to choose is a very personal decision. VitalSite and the Provider Directory gave us the flexibility to bring forward our most important content to create profiles that stand out from the competition and truly help prospective patients choose the Bronson provider that is right for them.”

Michael VanPutten, Digital Media Supervisor
Bronson Healthcare

Back in 2015, Bronson invested in creating a better online user experience and started that journey by migrating their website into Geonetric’s VitalSite. A branded microsite, Bronson Positivity, was also launched, highlighting inspiring patient stories.

The bronsonhealth.com website included a powerful, versatile find-a-doctor tool that enabled patients to easily find and choose a doctor from over 1,000 options, by specialty, availability and across 70 locations in southwest Michigan. The VitalSite Provider Directory made it easier for prospective patients to quickly access provider information – shortening search times and increasing traffic to and time visiting individual provider profiles.

In addition, the VitalSite platform allows flexibility to extend and customize provider profiles – enabling the Bronson team to showcase skill, expertise, and the unique personality of their care teams. Profiles include dynamically-controlled lists of accepted insurance plans by location and calls-to-action that drive visitors to MyChart to communicate online with their provider.

The directory also integrates seamlessly with news, events, location and service pages on Bronson’s site, allowing their team to dynamically promote providers on related pages, within high traffic sections and directly in search results. Patient stories are also dynamically displayed from the Bronson Positivity microsite due to a thoughtful strategy between Geonetric’s digital marketing and design teams.

Meet Your Doctors in a Whole New Way

In 2016, Bronson added a helpful way for patients to be even more informed when choosing a doctor by posting short “get to know” videos in the provider directory. These showcase each provider’s personality, special interests, and commitment to their patients, community, and work. The effort has resulted in increased engagement and time spent on the site.

With a strong foundation in place, the Bronson marketing team took providers’ profiles to another level in 2017. Observing the emerging consumer need for transparency, Bronson partnered with Geonetric to dynamically integrate patient ratings and reviews data from another vendor partner, National Research Corporation (NRC), into each provider profile.

All of these elements exemplify a patient-centered strategy for choosing doctors using qualification and selection criteria.

Enhanced Results in Search

Bronson wanted to ensure all the hard work that went into improving the provider profile user experience was easily accessible to organic search users, who make up a bulk of healthcare traffic across the web. Geonetric added schema to the provider profiles, making it easier for search engines to connect user queries to specific profile pages.

The digital marketing team at Geonetric also developed a keyword portfolio, which guided the development of more robust and search-friendly HTML page titles and page descriptions for all Bronson providers and locations.

After the metadata was live, provider profiles saw a double-digit increase in organic search entrances, which helps solidify the profiles with Google indexing and ranking, since Google and other search engines do factor click-through rate in ranking a page’s value.

In addition, many other measures helped to demonstrate success and a worthwhile ROI for the many enhancements made to provider profiles. Bounce rates decreased, session duration went up and user engagement increased. In particular on smartphones and tablets.

A Partner to Keep an Eye on Analytics

Analytics and insights are a major component for tracking success, identifying opportunities, evaluating user engagement, optimization and more. Bronson Healthcare and Geonetric’s digital marketing teams have worked closely together to leverage the best and most cost-effective tools and practices.

Together, they have continued to create new and improve existing reporting, conversion tracking, and data processing solutions. All of these pieces enable them to continue evolving and delivering the best online healthcare experience to the consumers of today and those of tomorrow.