Norton Healthcare is located in Louisville, Kentucky.  We serve the greater Louisville metro area including Southern Indiana & patients throughout Kentucky. Our pediatric care extends even beyond those boarders. We are a top 100 integrated healthcare delivery system with 4 hospitals and one pediatric. We have a network of 2,000+ physicians and we have a new hospital opening in 2009 that we are very excited to offer the community. We have done immediate care centers and our key specialties are in the area of cancer, heart, pediatric, women’s, orthopedic, neuro/spine, and bariatric. Of course we are very proud of our consumer web site (www.NortonHealtcare.com) and A.D.A.M. has really helped us build that.

I have been in marketing communications and interactive technologies for 16 years. But I have been involved in healthcare for almost 6 years. My healthcare experience has really been the most gratifying and offers an opportunity to marry marketing, communications and technology in so many new and helpful ways for the consumer.

Norton Healthcare is a very open culture, and it was an opportunity to really build a new business program from scratch and support the good work that Norton had been doing in the community for a long time.  It was an opportunity to offer a new venue to introduce consumers to the technology side via the web and to all the great doctors we have at Norton Healthcare, our hospital systems, our procedures, and how they can find a doctor.

A.D.A.M. content is an integral part of www.NortonHealthcare.com; we truly believe that as valuable as www.NortonHealthcare.com is, it really isn’t a complete site without A.D.A.M.  information. Having won 42 awards in the last couple of years we really attribute that to the partnerships that we have and the faith of the Norton Healthcare community in providing the right information for the consumers.

Oh I think so. One of the things I would say is we shouldn’t underestimate the older audiences who are doing research. We know that younger audiences, Gen X and Gen Y are very dependent on internet-based information and are looking for high-quality information and information they can trust, and A.D.A.M.  is that kind of information.  As we move toward the internet and mobile eras we are finding that the older demographic of patients are really using this information as much as the younger; it’s a research tool. It provides comfort, it gives the patient empowerment.

The traffic on www.nortonhealthcare.com has definitely been enhanced by A.D.A.M. products.  We use them to help drive information into some of our new services and products and also they work very well with standalone products. It gives the consumer choices in terms of how they want to look at information, how they want to do their research, and how they want to engage with Norton Healthcare.

The most important business objective was to develop the most robust third party content in the region. We really wanted to be a content source for healthcare consumers in Kentucky and Southern Indiana.  It was very important to find the right partner that could provide the content we were looking for. Norton is a leader in the community and we really needed to be a leader in information as well and we thought A.D.A.M. could provide that for us.

We had the opportunity to engage with almost every element that A.D.A.M. had to offer in 2003 and we continue to grow our A.D.A.M. product line as A.D.A.M. has grown. And so it really has provided the foundation for a lot of information around patient education and it is very consumer friendly.  The fact that you can organize the content in various ways to really promote the service lines that you have and promote the elements of the system that you are in makes A.D.A.M. content very robust and helps meet that goal.

We had a very involved process. We started with RFPs and we had about 5 different prospective partners we were looking at at the time. We worked through a content comparison and we actually built a content matrix to help us make some decisions and I think the most important part of the decision making process was to include other leaders at Norton to help us decide because we wanted the content not only to be valuable for our consumers in our community but also to the system itself. Our chief nursing officer helped us make selections as did as our chief medical affairs officer. And we had a variety of people who were nurses on the floor, and residents in the hospital so we could get different perspectives on what this content can provide.

Initially I was very impressed with A.D.A.M. in regard to the illustrations that were provided and the consumer friendly content.  It is really written from a non-medical perspective and allows the consumer to understand conditions, nutrition, surgeries, tests that they might have, things that may sometimes be a little complicated when you start talking about them clinically. The illustrations were very explanatory without being too explicit. The interactive pieces of content that A.D.A.M. has really surpassed all other competitors in the market place.  We get a lot of value out of The Body Guide and we look forward to getting involved with the Symptom Navigator.

We have been a partner with A.D.A.M. since 2003, so we have been a long time partner.  A.D.A.M. has really grown with us as we have grown, and it has been a really exciting journey. A.D.A.M. has been very responsive to our needs as we add customization.

We use almost every A.D.A.M. product with the exception of just three. And we hope to be using all of them soon. We feel that the A.D.A.M. products are not only modular but work so well with our native content on our site we can blend that content very easily.  A.D.A.M. content blends beautifully with our native Norton Healthcare content.

We were working with another third party health content vendor, a competitor in the marketplace. But I knew that there were better opportunities for partnering with a company like A.D.A.M. because I knew how progressive Norton wanted to be. And A.D.A.M. really helped us get there.

I think it is really a gateway to our community.  Often people come to the health information area on the site to learn more about surgeries and procedures and symptoms. The pregnancy health center is very, very popular. The care guides are so comprehensive that they really provide the healthcare consumer, the patient, a good deal of information and Norton certainly believes that an informed patient is the best patient to have.

We use the A.D.A.M. content in a number of different ways.  For example, the Health Risk Assessments are very popular among our consumers and it is an opportunity to drive them into asking for more advice from a Norton physician or learning more about what Norton can offer. 

It’s easy to determine how your third party content will support not only your goals but the traffic on your site. You can use your analytics programs to really drive into certain areas in the site and A.D.A.M. content provides a great entryway to traditional health content. We use the Drug Interaction Tool and Drug Information Center to start talking about our pharmacy services. As we look at Health Risk Assessments - if a consumer discovers that they might be at high risk for Heart Disease it is a great opportunity to introduce them to Norton Heart Care. So we kind of use it as an introductory vehicle for consumers and it also can stand alone.  Sometimes your consumers are really just interested in doing their own research and now they trust Norton because A.D.A.M. content is so reliable.

I have been very proud to be a partner with A.D.A.M. over the years.  The content is outstanding, the quality of the information that is provided is unmatched. The level of detail that is available and the flexibility that A.D.A.M. has provided for us has really made A.D.A.M. a great partner for Norton Healthcare.

Users find the content easy to use, easy to read, and find it actionable which is extremely important for us from a marketing perspective and also from an informational perspective.  We see consumers coming to the site actually thanking us for looking something up.  The Health Illustrated Encyclopedia is a great example. Consumers really appreciate how clean and organized the information is.  But it very robust as well and provides a great deal of information written for the consumer.  It allows them to take that information to their doctor and helps them understand what their best next steps might be.

We have had the opportunity to use the A.D.A.M. content for patient education and that has been very important to us. Our Nursing community, which is highly regarded, finds the A.D.A.M. content very reliable, easy to find, easy to use, and often serves a great role in helping our patient education programs.

Health Risk Assessments are the most popular A.D.A.M. component that consumers use.  It is independent, it provides good comprehensive information and analysis, and helps consumers understand what they could do next if they are at high risk for a condition.

I think A.D.A.M. is the whole package. One of the things I have really appreciated as a partner of A.D.A.M. is the ability to stay very modular, to be able to use the Pregnancy Health Center when and where it needs to be; to be able to pick out a Health Center and use that in conjunction with our own service lines has been valuable.  It has also been very valuable for us to be able to use all of the A.D.A.M. information together in our health information center. I think we are providing the consumer and the patient the best information available. It’s accurate; it is up to date, it’s reviewed, it’s URAC accredited. All of those things matter when you are looking for a good content partner. 

We promote it though our native magazine and on the website. We have opportunities to promote A.D.A.M. features in our brochures and also in our marketing materials. A.D.A.M. information is pretty prevalent in most of our marketing pieces.

Well, as I mentioned before, we have had a long standing relationship with A.D.A.M. We have really enjoyed the customer service. Customer service has been extremely important to us. The relationship manager that we work with is extremely responsive, very bright, knows the product so well and always comes up with innovative ideas to help us incorporate the products and work with other vendors that we have and we have had great success with that and I appreciate it very much. A.D.A.M. is not only a partner but they are friends. 

A.D.A.M. content is very valuable, we think it is worth the investment we made and we like being in a long term relationship with A.D.A.M.. A.D.A.M. is always building new modules, new ideas, new opportunities for interactivity, like moving in to the mobile area with iPhone apps.  They are always thinking broadly about the consumer and about the healthcare partner that they have. We feel every dime that we invest in A.D.A.M. is a dime that we investment in our community and in our patients.  

We have been very excited about this product. We have used embedded messaging in our centers of excellence and had an opportunity to really cross promote what Norton Healthcare can offer the consumer while educating them with A.D.A.M. material.

I have spent a lot of time looking at other third party content, I have been a content strategist in the past and understand the value of good, well written content, and concise web-based formulas.  And I really do believe that  no one does it better than A.D.A.M.