mHealth Case Study: Southern Maine Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Even though mobile is the fastest growing technology advance of the last 10 years, the healthcare industry has been slow to embrace it. Adding mobile to existing marketing and web strategies is a simple process if healthcare organizations set a goal for mobile - improving patient communications via mobile devices. It can even result in improving patient satisfaction scores.
Creative Mobile, LLC (CM) is a mobile website and communications solutions provider with an expertise is customer and patient engagement. The following is an example of how one healthcare organization is implementing a mobile strategy designed by Creative Mobile to improve patient communications.
Improving SMOMS’ Patient Communication
Southern Maine Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (SMOMS) is the largest oral surgery practice in Maine with three offices and five surgeons. SMOMS wanted to give their patients a convenient tool to access critical practice information - anytime, anywhere. Before Creative Mobile designed the healthcare mobile site for SMOMS, CM needed to understand how patients communicate with SMOMS. Currently, SMOMS utilizes a personal approach to patient communication with phones calls and e-mails answered by a trained staff of healthcare professionals.
Mobile Healthcare Goals: More Options for Patients, More Time for Critical Questions
Creative Mobile wanted to keep the professional healthcare staff communication lines open while giving patients access to multiple office phone numbers, driving directions, office hours, first visit information and pre-op/post-op instructions. The objective is for the SMOMS mobile website to address many of the routine patient questions and free up staff to spend more time handling patient critical needs.
10 Steps to SMOMS Mobile Website Development
1. Increase Touch Points – Mobile healthcare users want contact information and directions first, so it is critical to design the interface with the user in mind, from the home page to the sub-pages. By focusing on increasing touch points, SMOMS mobile site includes phone numbers and “contact us” on most pages.
2. One-Touch Navigation – Good mobile design allows the user to take actionable steps on critical information within seconds of opening an app or mobile website. SMOMS identified five critical pieces of information that patient’s need access to quickly. Creative Mobile incorporated the five critical pieces into a five tab design that allowed one-touch navigation to First Visit, Procedures, Pre-registration, Pre-Op and Post-Op.
3. Redundancy – One-touch hot linked phone numbers and hot linked addresses are placed on multiple pages to add convenience for the user. With the users anytime, anywhere access in mind, the mobile design added critical one-touch navigation on multiple pages.
4. Community – SMOMS patients are part of a community that includes referring dentists and orthodontists. The mobile website makes connecting with the surgeons’ personal - pictures of the surgeons, credentials, and contact information. No stock images - personal touches strengthen the surgeon-patient relationship and the SMOMS community.
5. Simple – The design is exclusively for the mobile web with functionality that focuses on SMOMS’ critical communication needs.
- Phone numbers and e-mail, during or after office hours
- Directions with Google Maps
- Surgeons’ profiles
- Pre-registration
- Procedures
- Pre-op instructions
- Post-op instructions
- Rotating banner space
6. Actionable – SMOMS wanted to give their patients access to critical information anytime, anywhere. The mobile website promotes the next step, engagement – phone calls, e-mails, directions, pre-register, prepare for surgery - anytime, anywhere.
7. Mobile Website – A mobile website offered SMOMS a good fit for their patient base. Most patients visit SMOMS three times. A mobile website allows all SMOMS smartphone users instant access to the new mobile site via a browser without a time consuming native app download.
8. Promote – SMOMS will place signs in their lobby promoting the mobile website with QR codes linking to www.smoms.com – ensuring rapid adoption of the mobile website.
9. Easy Install – Creative Mobile provides a redirect code that will be placed within the code of the existing SMOMS website. The redirect code identifies a smartphone screen resolution size and directs the mobile site to the phone user.
10. SaaS - Creative Mobile uses a Cloud based Software as a Service (SaaS) model that continuously backs up and updates the software. SaaS advantages in scalability, security and affordability were a good fit for SMOMS.
SMOMS’ mHealth Results
Stay tuned to this blog to learn how this mobile website development project helps SMOMS reach its goals.
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