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We identified the need to have the current prenatal education website for Mountain States Health Alliance revised to make it easier to navigate,  to read, and be more attractive to savvy web page users. We had been getting complaints on how difficult it was to navigate our current web site with many clients never finding the information they were looking for. We had also received many requests from class attendees for an on-line registration and payment options. We reviewed the web site ourselves finding it difficult to manuver and we realized that much of the information was incomplete or totally wrong.

We felt that a redesign was essential if we were going to attract more class participation, promote our prenatal classes and our obstetric service line. We saw an opportunity to expand the current information to include answers to frequently asked questions concerning pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum.  We completed a literature search to find current information on web site design and utilization. A web page has about 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression and this first impression will set the tone for the user’s entire experience and if the first impression is good, most users will overlook negative issues that come up as they continue utilize the web page. We also considered how the creation, formatting and placement of links impacts the functionality of the web page and the user’s perceptions of ease of use and aesthetics We learned that “hyperlinks” are essential in the properly designed and easy to use web page.

Studies show that up to 87% of women between the age of 18-24 use the internet. Also reported that 50% of these women make the health care choices for themselves and their families.

We designed a power point presentation with links that allowed it to function as a normal web page would. All content and functionality was reviewed by a lay person with no obstetric knowledge and little computer experience.We modified as needed to ensure that the content could be easily understood, was pleasing to look at and flow in a natural and easily navigable manner.Our web site is currently under construction and will be made part of the system web site soon. We want to encourage pregnant women or women who want to become pregnant to use our web site for information throughout their childbearing years. We hope that our web site will encourage child birth class participation and assist women in finding a physician or choosing one of our facilities for their delivery. We hope that once they have chosen us for delivery or classes they will continue to use our services for their health care and the health care of their spouses, children and other family members. We hope that by making answers available on-line, we can cut down on the calls to our obstetric units. We also feel that more patients will access needed information because they will not have to feel embarrassed or ashamed to ask the question.