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Building a Healthcare Website: A Project Manager’s Perspective

Eric Rickert Digital Project Manager, PMP
#Industry Insights, #Digital Strategy
Published on July 19, 2016
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We look at what project managers should consider when approaching a healthcare website redesign project.

At Diagram, we work to build websites every day, and we’ve created sites for a wide variety of industries, including education, manufacturing, and finance. While each of these industries presents its own challenges, one consistent aspect of our process has ensured success: project management.

As we’ve discussed previously, one of the key aspects of project management is communication. By facilitating this communication, a project manager is able to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that tasks are prioritized in order to meet the project’s timelines.

One particular industry in which we’ve put these skills to use is healthcare. When building healthcare sites, having a project manager on board to coordinate efforts is essential. However, facilitating communication and keeping the different teams and stakeholders on task is only one piece of the puzzle.

In addition to these project management efforts, here are a few areas that project managers for healthcare website projects will want to be aware of:

Multiple Locations and Practices

Is the healthcare site going to be a standalone site, or will it be representing multiple locations and/or practices? If you’re planning to represent multiple practices, it will be a good idea to build site templates that provide some ability for customization, allowing practices to differentiate themselves.

When building this type of site, project managers will need to be sure that enough time and effort is budgeted to build these customizable templates, put the functionality in place to deploy changes globally, test the customization capabilities, and provide training for end users.

Trustworthy Content

People visit healthcare sites looking for information that they can trust, so it is important to ensure that this information is accurate and up to date. Project managers should be sure that everyone understands who will be writing, editing, and maintaining this content, as well as ensuring that it is written and organized with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.

One other thing to keep in mind is that healthcare sites often syndicate content from a specialty site (such as HealthDay or MedicineNet) in order to provide informative information from their users. If this solution will be used, project managers will need to ensure that everyone involved understands how this syndication will be implemented and that the tools are in place for site editors to manage syndicated content.

Payments

Will the site allow patients to make online payments? Depending on the state where the organization is located and the types of payments being accepted, they may need to take measures to meet PCI compliance. Project managers will need to be sure that everyone understands the necessary security measures that should be implemented in order to protect payment information.

Patient Data

Will the site be storing any patient data? If so, measures will need to be taken to ensure that this data storage is HIPAA compliant. Project managers will need to make sure that stakeholders understand what will be necessary to meet these standards and that the work needed to do so is included in the project’s budget and timelines.

These are just a few of the considerations that project managers will need to take into account when building healthcare sites. If you’re looking to redesign your healthcare site and want to know how Diagram can help, please contact us, and we’ll work with you to create the ideal site to meet your needs and help you build a successful digital strategy.