This guide reviews the websites of the top ten healthcare companies from the point of view of a physician or other healthcare professionals. The reviews determine the effectiveness of a top website in terms of its design, usefulness, readability, and ease of navigation.
1. McKesson Corp.
Much of the information on this website is about the McKesson Corporation. The company works with pharmaceutical businesses and pharmacy systems. McKesson also manufactures products for the medical/surgical sector and life sciences. The company offers practice support and solutions for specialty medical practices that include oncology, rheumatology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, and neurology. See more pharmacy websites.
To find useful information, healthcare professionals can read the blog and find articles about professional issues published a few times weekly. Another information section of this website provides biopharma resources for companies wanting to bring specialty therapies to the market. This website offers white papers and brochures on McKesson’s solutions for the medical, surgical, and pharmacy sectors.
2. UnitedHealth Group
UnitedHealth Group has two subsidiaries that it provides links to on this website. They are Optum, a technology services provider specializing in data and analytics for health care management and pharmacy care. Optum has solutions for government agencies, businesses, and individuals. The other subsidiary is UnitedHealthcare, which provides health benefits programs as group coverage for employers, individuals, and families.
This website has a serious design flaw. It assumes the website visitor will know that UnitedHealth Group has two subsidiaries (Optum and UnitedHealthcare) and will Click on the link “businesses” to learn more about them. This is a poor navigation design.
The website should use a separate description of what the Optum and UnitedHealthcare subsidiaries offer to solve this problem. For example, it could use the words “services for health care providers” to link to the Optum information and “health benefits plans” to link to UnitedHealthcare information. These descriptive phrases are more informative navigation links than generic word business.
There is also room for improvement in the content. This website has very little useful general healthcare industry information because it is so biased toward the company’s interests, and all the “news” is only related to their companies.
3. CVS Health
This is the main website for the CVS company, which recently acquired the Aetna insurance company, and also has a website review in this guide. The CVS website has links to other subsidiary companies’ websites, including CVS Pharmacy, CVS Caremark, CVS MinuteClinic, CVS Specialty, and CVS Payor Solutions. These links are listed in a dropdown menu called “other sites” on top of the home page. If it is important enough to have these links on the home page, then they should be given more prominence than being hidden in a dropdown menu. It would be better to list them all out as text links in the header of the home page and not list them on a menu.
An interesting CVS web-based tool on the site shows the state-by-state impact of the CVS locations and services offered in America. This function is good, but there is an interface design flaw. A button marked “create report” is at the web page’s top left. It causes the creation of a report in pdf format. However, to use the feature properly, visitors must select the state they want to report about. The selection is made from a dropdown menu that is below this button on the web page, and then to get the report, they must go back up to use the “create report” button. This button should be below the state selection area for a more intuitive design.
The CVS Pharmacy (cvs.com) subsidiary website attempts to block anyone outside of the United States from using it. If you happen to go on vacation outside the US or be stationed overseas on military assignment and want to access the website, the website blocks access. You must use a US-based virtual private network (VPN) to avoid annoying IP address blocking. This idiotic blocking of non-US website visitors should be removed. It only irritates CVS customers since any hacker can easily get around it.
The CVS newsroom has some interesting articles about the healthcare industry and press releases about the company.
4. AmerisourceBergen Corp.
Of the healthcare websites reviewed in this guide, this one has the best intuitive navigation and useful design. The top menu choices on the header include about us, solutions, insights, and Careers. These provide clear information and links to get to the desired portion of the website easily and quickly.
Offered under the dropdown menu for the solutions link are health systems, pharmacies, physician practices, manufacturers, and animal health, which are easy categories to understand. Under the insights dropdown menu, there is an explore topics choice that leads to a vast library of content on many topics/ Topics included are advertising, analytics, buying a pharmacy, cell and gene therapy, clinical trials, pharmaceutical distribution, marketing, legislation, inventory management, patient care, and patient support services. There is also information about practice management, specialty pharmacy operations, secure supply chains, technology, etc.
This content library is very extensive and searchable. It is useful information for many healthcare practitioners and especially helpful for those involved in pharmacy operations.
5. Cardinal Health
This website breaks down the information into categories of services, professional products, and consumer products. The consumer products section has a tool to help a person find a retail store that sells Cardinal Health products.
There is also an essential insights section of quality content to read. There is the ability to use a dropdown menu and select a filter of the content to display articles that are of more interest to a web visitor. These filters sort through the articles based on the type of viewer (called “audience”). The categories include acute, manufacturer, payer, physician office, and retail pharmacy.
This website does an excellent job of inviting visitors to sign up for a company newsletter. A small but obvious “connect” button for the email address entered exists. There is also an invitation to get the newsletter on the top of the essential Insight web page. In addition to this feature, a plus sign on a button labeled feedback allows web visitors to give their opinions about the website.
The clever design of this website has features that are noticeable and useful without putting them in a way that blocks a user’s view or is annoying. See the best healthcare websites of the year.
6. Express Scripts Holding
This website is for those who are members of the Express Scripts pharmaceutical benefits plans through their employer, health plan, or Medicare Part D insurance. The website allows members to set up the delivery of prescriptions or for pickup at a local participating retail pharmacy.
The website interface is simple and easy to use. Members can get information about the program, pay a bill, order or refill a prescription, and get help. The only information of general use for health care practitioners is the up-to-date news about pharmaceutical recalls.
7. Anthem
Anthem is the trade name of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance program. This website is for members and providers of this health insurance. Anthem is available to some with federally-supported Medicare and Medicaid. Anthem health care plans are also available through some employers and as an individual or family policy.
This website is extremely well-designed. Website visitors can search for information by selecting a category on the home page representing their interests. This leads to a subset of web pages that gives them opportunities to shop for different Anthem health care plans, gives plenty of information about the different programs, and offers help for those that need assistance.
New members can enroll in their plan on this website and pay their bills online. Existing members can log in to review their account details. There is also a blog of information. The articles on the blog are about subjects related to preventative health care, member news, and basic health insurance questions.
8. Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente is a large health maintenance organization (HMO) serving a total of over 12 million members in California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and the Maryland/Virginia/ Washington D.C. region.
This website is designed for member use. It is well-designed, and the interface is intuitive and user-friendly. It is available in both English and Spanish languages. It helps people shop the plans, sign up for membership services, find the care and the providers in the Kaiser system that they need, and manage their health.
Kaiser is proactive in the healthcare management of its members. The website provides plenty of resources for members to learn more about improving their health. Online programs and information on the website include prenatal care, diets for losing weight, and exercise routines. It is easy to scroll through the blog posts that appear at the bottom of the home page.
In the Kaiser database, nearly 5,000 high-quality articles on healthcare issues are searchable on the website. There is no requirement to be a Kaiser member for anyone that wishes to read these articles.
View O360 Healthcare Website Gallery to see more well-designed sites.
9. Aetna
CVS recently acquired Aetna. It still maintains its customer service website for its policyholders and members. Its website also has information for employers, providers, and insurance brokers/agents. The website is available in English and Spanish.
Individuals can request an insurance quote, sign up, and pay the bill online. Employers can review plan options and get a quote. Once they contract for services, they can manage their plan online, get questions answered, and pay the bill. Once accepted, healthcare providers can apply to join the network and get an online account to learn about the programs. Insurance brokers and agents selling Aetna insurance products can manage their sales accounts with many support tools on the website.
One useful resource found on the website is the health guide. Members can select the categories of living healthy, understanding health care, and managing health. The health guide is a resource available to anyone who wants to read the articles. There is no requirement to be an Aetna policyholder or member to use this resource.
10. Humana
Humana is a large health insurance plan company that has over 14 million insured as its customers. Its website is designed well to accommodate the needs of members. It helps individuals and businesses select plans and access member services. New members can register after enrolling in an individual plan or joining through their employer.
Humana has links on this website to other websites that Humana created to support employers, providers, caregivers, insurance agents, and brokers that sell Humana policies.
Humana has a Go365® wellness program for its members, which rewards them for doing things that create a healthier lifestyle. Except for a few articles shown on the home page, a person must be a member of Humana to access any of the other information.
Conclusion
The CVS and the UnitedHealth Group websites possibly have a few design flaws that should be corrected. Suppose Humana has more articles available for its members. In that case, it should make more of the information accessible on its public website to increase the website’s authority and improve its ranking on the search engines.
For those who want to browse articles by category, the website of AmerisourceBergen Corp. is an excellent resource. Aetna’s website is a close runner-up and comes in second place. Its website addresses the needs of all healthcare stakeholders who use Aetna’s products and services.
The best-designed healthcare website of the ones reviewed in this guide is the website for Kaiser Permanente. There is a huge database of Kaiser articles that anyone can read, which, along with its superb website design, is why it ranks the best.
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