How Atlantic Health System Got its Governance Back

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”
—Kurt Vonnegut

Governance is the most boring word in the English language. Governance isn’t cool, or hip, or innovative. And it’s rarely—in fact, never—thought of as a profit driver.

But for large organizations like Atlantic Health System (AHS) that prioritize the quality, consistency, and accuracy of information across their digital platforms, proper content governance isn’t something you can just leave to chance.

It’s Cool to be Consistent

AHS enlisted Hero Digital to help reimagine how they deliver healthcare content to their more than 7.5 million patients across 14 counties in New York and New Jersey. From information on conditions and treatments to data on locations and providers, their content needs to serve a wide variety of patients with vastly different sets of healthcare needs. And they need a way to ensure that all that content meets the rigorous editorial and content standards of their world-class brand.

To do that, we worked closely with the AHS web team to develop comprehensive editorial content, governance, and authoring documentation that included:

• A brand messaging framework

• Tone and voice guidelines

• Color, typography, and capitalization rules

• Detailed walkthroughs of each page type, including section-level goals, content considerations, and authoring guidance

The content governance framework we developed helped streamline content creation, updates, and management, and it reduced errors and redundancies. It also supported better decision-making by providing clear content goals and guidance at a more granular level.

Content authors now have the tools to review their content against the latest best practices:

• Is the copy consistent with the AHS tone of voice and key messages?

• Is it formatted for scannability and comprehension?

• Does it meet the goals of the specific audience and situation?

• Does it take advantage of each component’s features and capabilities?

If so, then it’s good to go! If not, at least they have clear guidelines on how to bring the content up to AHS standards.

Governance is Good for the Bottom Line

Sure, effective content governance helps ensure legal and regulatory compliance and builds brand trust and credibility—but it also helps contribute to the bottom line. Because when you don’t have to spend time dealing with ad hoc content updates from disgruntled stakeholders or overworked healthcare providers, you can spend more time on the things that actually move the needle, like providing world-class healthcare to your patients.  

And what’s cooler than that?