BY: RHODA WEISS
Ms. Weiss is a Santa Monica, CA–based health care consultant and speaker.
Before the Internet became a major communications medium, many health care
organizations focused their activities on developing intranets to improve internal
communications. Intranets—which are mostly homegrown computer networks that
use Internet protocols and technologies to connect people, departments, and
facilities across an organization—were relatively inexpensive to develop and
maintain, compared to the much higher-priced external Internet.
But although they were the rage in the mid-to-late 1990s, intranets were soon
eclipsed by the Internet and its ability to reach outside customers. In the
late '90s, health care organizations began to spend hundreds of thousands and
even millions of dollars to develop and maintain websites. They did this in
the hope of luring customers and increasing market share with whiz-bang technology
and applications, always trying to keep one step ahead of the competition.
But while the Internet strategy still ranks near the top of marketing and
communications activities, more and more Catholic health care organizations
are turning to intranets as a means to better connect with their employees,
physicians, programs, and services. The goals are to improve access to internal
communications, help with resource management, and promote information sharing—right
on the employee's desktop.
The St. Vincent Story
One organization that has been successful in its employee intranet efforts
is St. Vincent Health System, Little Rock, AR. Founded by the Sisters of Charity
of Nazareth in 1888, the system today comprises four hospitals and eight primary
care clinics, a home health agency, and multiple joint venture health care entities
in central Arkansas.
Like many other organizations, St. Vincent used to be totally dependent on
print communications, including print forms, policies, and procedures. "Access
to information was limited and communications less than timely for our employees,"
explains Dan McFadden, St. Vincent's special media manager. "Our research revealed
that three out of four of our employees did not have e-mail or Internet access,
although at least 70 percent had access to a personal computer (PC) with an
Internet browser, the software program that allows for interface with the Web."
So in late 2001, St. Vincent set out to add an intranet as an additional means
of employee communications. "Our objective was to have at least 30 percent of
our employees able to access electronic news and information daily during the
first 30 days of launch," McFadden says. "Within six months, St. Vincent's forms,
policies, and procedures, and other requested information would be available
on employee desktops."
To achieve this, St. Vincent developed what it called an Employee Council,
designed specifically to promote and improve the flow of information and access
to resources via an intranet. The 16 members of the council, called "i-administrators,"
were clinical and nonclinical staff members selected from throughout the organization
to represent their departments in the development and implementation of the
intranet. The council was responsible for conducting employee research during
the project development (and both before and after its launching); developing
employee-friendly policies and procedures to ensure timely responses to posting
content; and seeking employee input on all facets of employee "e-communications."
The Employee Council also teamed with St. Vincent's Information Technology
Team to negotiate for and purchase the hardware and servers needed to support
an intranet, all the while providing frequent status reports to the system's
senior leaders.
The council's first task was to survey department employees to determine appropriate
intranet content, review content requests, develop intranet policies and procedures,
and develop a first draft of the intranet's architecture. The team also reviewed
the content delivery process, home page and back page parameters, and worked
with in-house designers.
To keep employees involved and interested in the project, a "Name the St.
Vincent Intranet" contest was conducted. More than 300 suggestions were submitted.
"SV Insider" was the name selected.
During the first week of 2002, the servers and related hardware and software
for the intranet arrived at St. Vincent. Within two weeks, the "i-administrators"
were testing the intranet. Although all St. Vincent computers (including desktop
models in nurses' stations) were equipped with a quick-link to the intranet,
not all employees had easy access to a computer at first. To remedy this, the
system's information services department agreed to provide "employee communication
stations" (PCs with Intranet access) to each hospital, placing them in medical
libraries, employee and surgery break rooms, and similar locations.
St. Vincent initiated a "soft" launch of the intranet in February and March
2002. Senior managers and employees gathered in focus groups tested it to identify
kinks and prioritize various additions and revisions. A Web-based visitor tracking
and evaluation tool was purchased to monitor and measure visitor trends.
Through primary research and focus groups, St. Vincent discovered that employees
initially wanted online access to a phone directory, lunch menus, calendars,
nursing and education pages, forms, policies, and procedures. "We created the
'e-phone directory,' updated on a daily basis, and lunch menus for each hospital,"
says McFadden. "Forms and policies and procedures consistently fall into the
'Top 5 Pages' hit status," he adds. Extensive nursing and education pages with
interactive calendars were created to improve access to this information.
Timely news and information is posted multiple times daily to generate additional
hits and site usage. E-mail blasts provide links to new areas in the guise of
"Did You Know?" teasers. Other information found on the intranet includes hospital
and clinic updates, news concerning the Hospital Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act, quality management reports, site maps, foundation activities, education
materials, a systemwide calendar of events, and conference room schedules.
A Successful Launch
In late March, St. Vincent's intranet was launched formally. "We were so
proud that this was truly a homegrown project," says McFadden. "It is truly
an employee-named, -designed, -researched, and -developed intranet." To generate
employee interest, St. Vincent's leaders included in the launch day activities
an intranet-based scavenger hunt that encouraged employees to become familiar
with the intranet and the information on it.
"We registered 23,225 hits on launch day, with 70 individually created and
designed pages of information," says McFadden. In April, St. Vincent tracked
654 "unique" visitors (a unique visitor is identified by his or her Internet
protocol address, domain name, or "cookie"). "While that is 21 percent of the
work force, it does not account for nurses' stations,"
McFadden says. "Each nurses' station is tracked as one user, although as many
as 10 nurses share the same PC over a month's time. We estimate that, at that
time, we were reaching approximately 70 percent of the workforce." By early
2003, St. Vincent had tracked 729 unique visitors, an increase of 11 percent
in 10 months.
In May 2002, the "i-administrators" launched what they called a "Test Drive
the St. Vincent Intranet" booth at the system's Employee Wellness Fair. At the
fair, 60 percent of the participants were able to correctly identify their "i-administrators."
In addition, Spirit Extra, a special edition of the St. Vincent employee
newsletter, was devoted entirely to informing employees about the benefits of
the intranet.
The total cost of the project was less than $98,000, $5,000 under the amount
budgeted for it. More than 85 percent of the budget was spent on servers, processors,
memory, storage space, and software. Having the intranet designed in-house saved
the system $65,000. Now that it is up and running, the intranet is expected
to reap net savings of more than $1,000,000 annually in staff productivity.
St. Vincent used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating database-driven
forms; now it has become "paperless" in those areas. The expense was eliminated
with the help of an educational collaboration with the University of Arkansas
at Little Rock's CyberCollege. In June 2002, St. Vincent's "i-administrator"
met with faculty advisers from CyberCollege to discuss a unique partnership
whereby senior students would (under the supervision of St. Vincent Information
Services) conduct an intranet needs assessment and create interactive forms
using pre-existing employee databases, all at no cost to St. Vincent. The CyberCollege
seniors adopted a business name (NeXus Group) and continue to develop interaction
forms and perform other database activities on a volunteer basis.
St. Vincent's homegrown venture continues to be successful. In August 2002,
the intranet registered a record-high 831 unique visitors, an increase of 59
percent (489) over its first full week of service. The intranet has also received
national recognition. This summer St. Vincent was honored with the Public Relations
Society of America's Bronze Anvil Award of Commendation.
Rhoda Weiss can be contacted at
310-393-5183.
Copyright © 2003 by the Catholic Health Association of the United States
For reprint permission, contact Betty Crosby or call (314) 253-3477.