Region’s Hospitals Compute the Potential of Cyberspace
Local hospitals are rushing into cyberspace to unveil new sites on the World Wide Web. But they aren’t drawing big crowds.
“This for many hospitals is an experiment,” says Linda Zimmer, an Anaheim consultant. “They don’t know what to expect from this. And it’s too new to have results.”
Those with Web sites include Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach and United Western Medical Centers in Santa Ana. Consultants expect another five Orange County-area hospitals will follow this year.
Hospitals see cyberspace as a cheap way to reach a multitude of potential patients. Those with in-house computer and graphics people can scrape together a Web site for virtually nothing, compared with the high costs of promotional mailings. They advertise everything online from doctors’ resumes to child-birth classes for new parents and “coffees with a cardiologist” for senior citizens.
The consumer encountering all this stuff may get lost, however.
United Western, the first Orange County hospital company to create a site, slapped it together using old photographs and text from brochures. The result? A compendium of dull, text-laden material and static illustrations, including a smiley photo of the top brass. John Sacco, the company’s chief information officer, says the company saved on costs by using file material while it learns its way around cyberspace.
Hoag Memorial’s home page, while graphically promising, has yet to deliver on content. The reader, clicking a mouse to visit the nine separate informational centers listed in “Index of Services,” finds all but one still under construction. Stacey Barck, Hoag’s director of communications, says the hospital is trying to make the process less frustrating for consumers by posting the dates when the informational centers will be completed.
*
Barbara Marsh covers the health-care industry for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7762 and at barbara.marsh@latimes.com.
James Marchant, assistant systems editor, contributed to this report.
