by Cynthia Floyd Manley
Work of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s department of Marketing and Engagement once again was recognized among the best in health care digital communications during last week’s Healthcare Internet Conference.
The peer-reviewed eHealthcare Leadership Awards were presented Nov. 4 during one of the leading gatherings of digital communications professionals in health care across the country.
Vanderbilt Health won three awards, including top honors (a Platinum Award) in the Social Media Program category. Monroe Carell Jr. The Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt website received Awards of Distinction in the categories of Best Mobile Site and Best Doctor Directory.
The social media program entry focused on COVID-related social media activity in 2020-21 that reached more than 266 million social media users.
Social media activity highlighted in the winning entry included:
- Frontline video diary series, published weekly on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn and which led to coverage by local media outlets and NBC News. This series received more than 500,000 views.
- The viral post of the year, nurses praying together on the Lifeflight helipad in the early weeks of the pandemic. This post reached more than 375,000 users on Facebook and Instagram and 1.2 million on Twitter. It also was featured by Good Morning America and in USA Today.
- The campaign to encourage and coordinate donation of hand-sewn masks. This activity drove more than 530,000 unique visits to VUMC’s COVID website and resulted in donation of more than 30,000 masks.
- Multiple posts related to vaccination including Dolly Parton getting her first shot, and another set of video selfies of VUMC staff sharing why they chose to be vaccinated.
The current Children’s Hospital website is three years old and underwent a design iteration within the past year. The responsive mobile view is based on best industry practices and research into what users want most when they visit the site on the go.
The Doctor Directory is an innovative system bringing together and displaying key pieces of data from “source of truth” databases, including the Provider and Facility Database and the Press Ganey star-reviews and ratings system.
The website uses a novel “headless” content management system designed to deliver individual data components to different sites as well as environments such as the Google search ecosystem.
In its 22nd year, the eHealthcare Leaders Awards recognize the best digital communications and the industry-leading practices that set the winners apart.
Awards were presented in 22 categories and chosen among more than 1,000 entries. Honorees include hospitals, health systems, physician practices, payor organizations, nursing homes, home care agencies and others in healthcare.
