Case Study - Kingston Regional Health Care

(www.kingstonhospital.org)

THE CLIENT
Kingston Regional Health Care System (KRH) is a group of hospitals and medical service providers with operations in Kingston and Margaretville, NY. KRH includes The Kingston Hospital (160 beds, acute care), Margaretville Memorial Hospital (15 beds, critical access), Mountainside Residential Care Center (82 beds, skilled nursing), The Kingston Hospital Healthcare Foundation, and The Occupational Health & Wellness Center (Kingston WORx). All provide non-sectarian, not-for-profit services to serve the people in the Hudson Valley region. The Kingston Hospital was first established in 1894, Margaretville Memorial Hospital opened its doors over 70 years ago, and the Mountainside Residential Care Center and WORx are affiliated with Margaretville and Kingston hospitals, respectively. The Foundation provides financial support for all facilities and programming.

THE CHALLENGE
KRH had previously hired a large web development company to create their original web site. However, the company’s coding system was proprietary and they wouldn’t release the site to KRH. By the time KRH contacted O\W, the web site had not been updated in over 18 months and had been pulled from the Internet.

KRH liked the appearance and navigation system of their old web site, but felt it was poorly organized and especially did not like the fact they were being charged a fee each time they wanted to make even the simplest text changes. One of their highest priorities in creating a new site was having the ability to update the site independently. The original web site had six different sites, including one facility that is no longer part of KRH. The site needed to be re-created from the ground up in a very short time frame and, due to KRH budget constraints, they couldn’t afford to do everything they wanted to do all at once.

The KRH team included three administrators. While the web site was being recreated, there were several staffing changes, including the CEO of the Kingston Hospital, presenting unusual challenges in regard to decision making, content development and launching the site on schedule.

THE O\W SOLUTION
Even though the old web site was not operational when the O\W team came on board, they were able to capture some of the essential information needed to begin creation of the new site. During the process of consultation and establishment of basic page templates, the six-member O\W team advised a more modern, data-driven platform (.NET) be combined with Macromedia Contribute to allow KRH administrators to update content and images without incurring fees each time changes were required.

Concurrent with development of the site, KRH asked O\W to create a new Physician’s Directory, which meant the O\W team utilized both creative and programming staff. “While creating this web site, we used the entire mix of all the skills we offer,” says Shannon Renckens, project manager at O\W. “The site we launched was very similar to the previous site but, based on our recommendations, ended up being much more easy to navigate.”

“Because it had been so long since the site was current, everyone was very excited about having the ability to update it,” Renckens adds. “During numerous consultations during the development process, we recommended several business solutions to simplify the site, such as combining some categories and pages to make it more user-friendly. We were also able to clearly illustrate the effect of simplification, not only on the end user, but also on KRH staffing and funding resources.”

O\W laid a flexible foundation for the site to allow changes to the framework when additional funding was available.

RESULT
The site launched on time and on budget in January 2004. Following training and assistance from O\W, KRH administrators were immediately able to update the site by themselves, and are very pleased with their new web site. KRH does not need to forward text and images to an IT Department or HTML expert when changes are needed, which will incur an ongoing cost benefit to them. They have the freedom and flexibility they want to keep the site fresh.

According to Cynthia Rozenberg, director of strategic planning and corporate communications at KRH, “Oxclove was very easy to work with, especially since I’m not a director of information services and I don’t speak that language. One of the best outcomes, considering the fact that we recently had to lay off a lot of staff a year or two ago in order to meet a financial crisis, is we’ve been able to use the web site to recruit nursing and technical staff. Oxclove really cleaned up the site, made it much more user-friendly, and we’ve gotten a lot of hits, a lot of active use. Ric Dragon was very helpful in creating an interim solution that really worked for us, met our biggest priorities, and allowed us to function again online. In the health care business, if you don’t have a web site, you don’t exist.”

O\W continues to work with KRH in a quality control capacity and provides technical assistance and consultation when needed.