The hospitals Waterlandziekenhuis and Westfriesgasthuis merged in 2017 with the aim of insuring patients for specialist medical care in the region. Under the new name of Dijklander Ziekenhuis, they focus on planable, complex and non-complex care treatments. This type of radical change and its impact requires clarity in communication. Important instrument: a new website. 

Primary page Dijklander.nl
Why Drupal was chosen: 

SWIS ❤️ Drupal, because we believe in proven technology and are strong advocates of using and working with open source software. We choose Drupal as our main platform for building websites and platforms. For us, it is the ultimate solution for open source ultra solid code. Drupal makes it possible to customize - to the last details - which provides us with a perfect balance of flexibility and reusability. Moreover, the Drupal community makes sure the product evolves quickly and thoroughly, making sure speed, safety and reusability are guaranteed.

Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome): 

The platform

With the website, Dijklander hospital wanted to exceed the expectations of visitors, bind patients and make employees proud. 

The biggest challenge with these goals was to merge all content from both (former) websites into one website where patients find their information friendly, clearly and inexpensive. Despite the new name: Dijklander. This required agreement between the staff of similar departments of the two hospitals. 

The latter was extremely successful, because the new website ensured that departments (such as an operation) started talking to each other. With this they realized that they work in one hospital. The result: the staff has come closer together and visitors are better served with information they need. Which ultimately leads to better bonding with patients. 

Challenges

With the team of Dijklander (over 150 people) we created 548 new pages, merged from the former websites. The new homepage of Dijklander Hospital helps visitors to quickly find relevant information. 

An important aspect for hospital websites is the acquisition of good staff. Vacancies must always be synchronized with an external application. For this we use the Migration API from drupal core. This retrieves information from Connexys. 

Waiting times on a hospital website are also important. To meet the legal obligations. And for visitors, because this is a determining factor when choosing a hospital. For this we have built a custom entity so that they are the same on all pages. Easy to use by different staff members. 

Technical specifications

Drupal version: 
Drupal 8.x
Organizations involved: 
Screenshot recruitment website
Screenshot recruitment website
Screenshot care section Dijklander.nl
Sectors: 
Healthcare