Inova is Northern Virginia’s leading nonprofit health care provider, recognized in 2019 by U.S. News & World Report, which named Inova Fairfax Hospital the #1 hospital in the Washington, DC, region. Four of Inova’s five hospitals hold five-star rankings from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Inova’s 18,000 team members serve more than 2 million individuals annually through an integrated network of hospitals, primary and specialty care practices, emergency and urgent care centers, outpatient services and destination institutes. Inova is home to Northern Virginia’s only Level 1 Trauma Center and Level 4 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Its hospitals have a total of 1,800 licensed beds.
Centretek is a long-time strategic partner of Inova, having previously designed and developed several native mobile apps for them. We were later selected through a competitive RFP process in 2017 to lead the strategy, design and development of the new Inova website that launched in 2019.
About the project
The Challenge
Inova's previous website did not support a strong patient experience, failed to effectively convert prospective patients, lacked an intuitive architecture and content strategy, and had grown bloated. Additionally, the website lacked an effective mobile optimized user experience, and had accessibility challenges. To complicate matters further, it was dependent on an outdated proprietary WCMS that prohibited Inova's staff from easily managing their own website.
Beyond the technical and design limitations, the website did not effectively address consumer misperceptions and appropriately reflect the Inova brand. Specifically, some consumers had outdated ideas about Inova's depth and breadth of specialty care for complex medical conditions, and the quality and age of the facilities.
The Solution
The Centretek team led an extensive discovery and strategy effort that defined the requirements for the new website and provided a roadmap for a digital engagement strategy. The new solution included the following highlights.
Highlights
- Built in Drupal 8 in the Acquia Cloud
- Accurately reflects Inova’s brand and clinical differentiators
- Extensively uses engaging video throughout the site
- Integrates with DocASAP online scheduling for providers
- Integrates with Press Ganey provider ratings and reviews
- Integrates with real-time wait times: https://www.inova.org/emergency-room-wait-times
- Provides a patient-centric online experience focused on access and transparency
- Leverages strategically minded calls to action, tools, landing pages, social integration and integrated digital campaigns
- The end result is a digital presence capable of guiding a user from awareness through conversion and a platform that allows Inova to amplify its reach, resonance and conversion goals
- 2019 eHealthcare Leadership Awards: Best Doctor Directory (https://www.inova.org/doctors) and Best Mobile Website
- 41% increase in traffic to doctor profiles
- 37% increase in engagement on doctor profiles
- 17% increase in traffic to services & treatments pages
Why Drupal was chosen
- It's widely supported by a large number of qualified agencies and development shops (like Centretek)
- It's provides a highly flexible and scalable development foundation than can be customized to the organization's specific needs
- It's proven - there are thousands of high-profile websites running on Drupal and the overall growth trend for Drupal has been exponential. Additionally, it's being used widely in healthcare with plenty of marquee examples across the industry.
- It's open source software with no licensing costs
- Inova wanted an easy to use platform that allowed internal staff to easily manage content
- Inova wanted to move away from the previous proprietary WCMS platform that was limiting and a challenge to use
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Custom theme and some custom module development. The community modules we selected are well documented and supported. Probably the most important module we used was Entity Reference and some associated bits and pieces to link together the different pieces of content (departments, tests & treatments, etc.). This type of content cross promotion through a centralized taxonomy is critical for a site like this.
