In a crisis, hospital websites become critical tools for communication, bridging chaos and clarity. This article explores how to prepare your site with effective alerts, seamless workflows, and user-friendly design to keep your community informed and reassured.
During a crisis—be it a hurricane, a pandemic, or a power outage—your audience isn’t just browsing. They’re looking for guidance, answers, and assurance. Everyone will be looking for clear, concise and timely communication. As an essential service, you have to participate in this collective effort.
Let’s dive into how you can prepare your hospital website to serve as a beacon of information in your crisis response strategy.
Imagine this: a hurricane is barreling toward your city. Families are scrambling for safety, and someone you love is in the ICU. What do you do? You pull out your phone, search for the hospital’s name, and hope to find real-time updates on patient care, evacuation plans, or safety measures.
Hospitals aren’t just trusted institutions—they’re embedded in the daily lives of your communities. In a moment of panic, whether for themselves or a relative, they might turn to you. Think about updates on road closures near the hospital or CDC-recommended protocols for a health scare, hospital websites are a bridge between chaos and clarity.
Most hospital websites are built to attract and inform patients. But in a crisis, they must pivot from being marketing tools to operational lifelines. For example, during the early days of COVID-19, many hospitals transformed their homepages into hubs for updates on testing sites, visitation policies, and infection rates.
This isn’t just a marketing team’s job. It’s a collaborative effort. Marketing teams handle the website, but operational teams manage the emergencies. Imagine trying to coordinate updates about power outages during an ice storm—these two teams need to be in lockstep to get the right message out, fast.
Of course, the website doesn’t work in isolation. It’s one piece of a larger communication puzzle. Social media, text alerts, and even emails must echo the same message.
Take Hurricane Harvey, for instance. Hospitals in affected areas used a mix of Facebook updates, SMS alerts to staff, and emergency banners on their websites. This seamless coordination kept patients informed and reassured, whether they were online or offline.
The key? Unified workflows. No one should be updating Facebook with one version of events while another team posts conflicting information on the website.
Let’s get specific. What makes a hospital website’s alert system effective?
And now, what not to do:
Emergencies demand clarity and coordination. When every second counts, smooth communication is the top priority. Here’s how to ensure your hospital’s alert system works seamlessly:
Operations teams manage the crisis, while marketing shapes the message. To avoid confusion and friction, marketing must adopt the audience's voice—clear, compassionate, and actionable—while operations oversee timing and accuracy. In many cases, it makes sense for operations to lead, with marketing providing support.
Save time by preparing templates for scenarios like severe weather or outages. These ensure swift, audience-appropriate communication that aligns with operational needs.
Practice makes perfect. Drills help refine workflows, train staff, and ensure your system is ready to deliver clear, consistent updates when it matters most.
By prioritizing clarity, coordination, and preparation, your team can ensure effective communication in any crisis.
Hospital websites are lifelines that can connect communities to critical information when it’s needed the most.
By creating user-friendly, accessible alert systems, collaborating across teams, and preparing for the unexpected, hospitals can ensure their websites deliver not just information, but trust and reassurance. In a crisis, that makes all the difference.
Let’s face it: emergencies are stressful enough. If your team can trust your technology and your processes, they’ll be able to focus on what matters most: taking care of your community.
