Website features every hospital should have

1. The emergency number is at the top of every page, tappable, with the ambulance number beside it, and the emergency page says where to go and what to bring. 2. Departments are listed as patients search them, each with its own page: what it treats, the doctors, the procedures, the facilities, how to book. 3. Doctors have individual pages with name, photograph, qualifications as registered, specialty, languages, the days and hours they consult, and a booking link — and a search by name, specialty and day. 4. Services and procedures each have a page: what it is, for whom, what to expect, how long, what decides the cost, which doctors do it, and the questions patients ask. 5. Locations: each hospital or centre has its own page with the full address, map, hours, parking, the departments at that location and its own numbers. 6. Facilities and diagnostics — ICU, imaging, laboratory, pharmacy — are described with hours and how to access them, and health packages have a page with contents and how to book.

The navigation follows the patient’s question — find a doctor, find a department, book, emergency — not the organisation chart.

7. Booking is one tap from every doctor and department page: a phone number, a WhatsApp link, and an online booking that shows real availability or a callback promise with a time. 8. Contact is complete on one page and repeated in the footer: numbers by purpose — appointments, emergency, enquiries, insurance — addresses, hours, and a form with three fields that says what happens next. 9. Patient information is organised for the visit: what to bring, admission and discharge process, visiting hours, insurance and cashless procedures with the empanelled insurers listed, billing, reports and how to collect them, and international-patient information if relevant. 10. The site works on a cheap phone on a mobile network in under three seconds, with the number and the emergency line visible without scrolling, text large enough to read while anxious, and no pop-ups. 11. Accessibility: readable contrast, alt text on images, forms that work with a screen reader, and the local language where the community needs it.

Items 7 and 10 decide most of the appointments. A hospital site that looks good on the administrator’s laptop and takes eight seconds on a patient’s phone has failed.

12. Every doctor’s page has an owner who confirms availability monthly; a doctor who has left is removed within the week. 13. Content governance: a review date on every clinical page, a rule that the medical director approves anything naming a doctor, a treatment outcome or a claim, and no testimonials without written consent. 14. Privacy: forms collect only what booking needs, a plain privacy notice, no patient data in analytics or advertising tools, no retargeting audiences built from treatment pages, and the site over HTTPS. 15. Performance and search: the site indexed, fast, with structured data for the hospital, its locations and its physicians, the same identity as the Google profiles, and analytics with call tracking so appointment enquiries by source are counted. 16. Update ownership: one named person, a monthly check of numbers, hours and doctors, and a quarterly review of the patient paths with someone who does not work there.

Checks 12 to 16 are what separate a hospital site that is true from one that was true at launch.

The mistakes: the chairman on the home page and the emergency number in the footer; departments named as the organisation names them; doctors without photographs or hours; stock images; a booking form with twelve fields; patient data leaking into ad tools; doctors who left still listed; and nobody owning the site after launch. A safeguard: at 10 pm, on a phone, find a specific doctor’s consulting days and book — if it takes more than a minute, the site is failing its user.

A good hospital site gets a worried person to the right doctor and the number in under a minute, tells them what to expect, lets them book with a tap, and is true this month. This is the hospital website work we do — the patient-path structure, the department, doctor and service pages written for patients, the booking and contact paths, the privacy and performance setup, the schema, and the governance routine with a named owner — and the free audit starts with the three strangers on their phones.