Let’s face it, checking into the hospital usually isn’t under the most pleasant circumstances, so the last thing you need is one that gives you the cold shoulder because it lacks a communication platform that’s understandable and convenient.

Peninsula Regional Health System knew it was in need of emergency web care, so they called on the best around to perform some lifesaving web development. And that would be us.

Starting in early 2015, the team here at Inclind embarked on a six-week discovery process with Peninsula Regional Health System (PRHS) to clearly define the objectives for a possible healthcare website redesign. In other words, we interviewed department heads and integral staff members to get to know the organization inside and out. And what we discovered were two main problems to be resolved:

The PRHS marketing team had no real control over the current website; major barriers were preventing them from making changes and updates to the site when needed.
The site wasn’t modern or touch-friendly and the content wasn’t up-to-date.
The location of PRHS along the coast requires the hospital to be, well, hospitable and approachable for this tourism area. The site needs to appeal to two audience sets: visitors who know nothing about PRHS, as well as long-term residents of the local community that rely on the healthcare system.

Our very own Nick Bumgarner, project coordinator Nancy Jones, designer Amy Wood and Shaun Tyndall scrubbed in each and every week to meet and collaborate with PRHS, as the redesign officially began last summer, followed by an agile development process that started with physician search and location search function and continues with the website launch April 1, when we will shift into a support role, and even into late 2016, when the PRHS patient portal is expected to roll out.

Development building blocks included moving the site onto our partner hosting system, Pantheon and the Influence Health marketing platform, using the Drupal 7 technology – something we were sure to educate PRHS on, so they were on board with all of its benefits and advantages. Web design was transformed from stagnant and stale into responsive and interactive, delivering the same positive experience onto any device you’re accessing peninsula.org from. Static promo panels were brought to life with rotating hospital videos on the home page.

The redesign is mobile-friendly, focused on user tasks like improved doctor searches simplified by filters such as a doctor’s name and specialty.

And with the mobile WayFinder tool, visitors can find the closest lab, pharmacy or doctor’s office based on their location anywhere outside the hospital – even find your way around from within the hospital walls with Google Indoor Maps!

Potential employees are able to conduct more productive job searches thanks to an integration with HealthcareSource, the user experience we’ve implemented now seamlessly populates all career posts within Peninsula.org.

Instead of this page being dropped into a third party job search engine, it’s dynamically loaded right onto Peninsula.org to complement the design style of the site.

Plus, visitors can scroll through a news and events section designed to deliver a more visual, interactive experience, complete with a convenient calendar that features a filtered search for events by category.

It’s a project that’s been a year in the making – and one we’re proud of, but as usual per our philosophy, it’s not one that’s over after the April 1 launch. We’ll continue to maintain the health of the website and look for ways to improve with scheduled checkups.

Because that’s our way of providing quality healthcare.