HIPAA eCommerce

Product Details on HIPAA Websites and Patient Portals

Updated  |  4 min read

We all know how important product details on a HIPAA website are when trying to sell something online. Not only can they give customers the information to decide if they are going to purchase a product, but they also help them find products in the first place with the SEO it provides. Product details are a simple concept. No need to overthink it, right?

hipaa dynamic product details

The fact is, while some products are perfectly fine with the standard product details, there are some aspects of the page that will be specific to certain products. In other words, the options for product details need to be dynamic so that each product can have the information at hand without sacrificing design and user experience. Below you’ll find information about improving product details while still maintaining HIPAA website compliance.

What Are the Most Common Product Details?

Every eCommerce site uses product details to tell prospective customers about the item they’re looking at. This includes a basic description, images, dimensions, stats, etc. Visual elements are also vital for most products, which can include static images, 360-degree views, or videos. Related items, kit items, or variants of the product can also be included, though care must be taken to prevent the page from looking cluttered or “salesy.”

A good product details page—whether on websites or patient-doctor portals—delivers the information very quickly and is designed to guide a user’s eyes through the description, letting them find what they need quickly.

hipaa product details
problems with hipaa product details

Problems That Exist

Many HIPAA eCommerce platforms are missing a key component: the ability to add additional steps after a customer has chosen a product.

Let’s take the example of an online HIPAA-compliant pharmacy. A customer might be able to add a medicine to their cart, but they need to be aware of additional steps that might prevent them from buying right away. If the customer believes they can just add to the cart and check out, they will be frustrated that they now have additional steps (entering a prescription) before they can check out. At that point, expectations must be managed again because the customer must be told how long it could take for their prescribing doctor to respond to the request.

Of course, there’s an even bigger problem that can precede this scenario: the HIPAA eCommerce platform can’t handle these additional steps at all. Many out-of-the-box platforms and software packages simply can’t fathom the need for these extra steps, and making them compatible with these options can be a considerable effort for developers. It’s time to consider a more powerful eCommerce platform as a replacement.

hipaa ecommerce
how product pages deliver

How Product Details Pages Deliver

There are a few reasons why a company that has to maintain HIPAA Security Rule compliance—called a covered entity, or CE—might need a HIPAA-compliant website on an eCommerce platform that works with the product details page to deliver a more robust experience for their customers.

Walking Customers Through the Process

The additional steps that accompany a product page must help a customer through the process in an efficient and non-confusing manner. This information presented and collected can take many forms:

product page process
Physician Approval
  • Physician Approval – Getting physician approval is a common step, especially when it comes to online pharmacies. If the customer isn’t showing up with a prescription, they will have to fill out certain fields to send the request to their authorized healthcare provider. Expectations about how long it takes for the healthcare provider to respond should be very clear.
  • Patient Acknowledgements – Sometimes, doctor approval isn’t enough from a legal standpoint. For certain items, patients may be required to sign off that they have read user instructions or that they acknowledge side effects that may occur.
Patient Acknowledgements
Eligibility
  • Eligibility – A customer might be investigating a medical procedure or a medication after seeing an advertisement for it, but are they a physical candidate for it? Answering these questions—which immediately become HIPPA-covered data—can tell them if they should pursue the item or service at all. If they are eligible, what’s the next step in order to purchase? If they are not eligible, what are some alternatives?
  • Healthcare Provider Finder – The product being offered may not be a product at all. Finding a healthcare provider might be the final goal for your customer, and this often starts with the service they’re looking for. After the customer works their way through the questions presented to them, you can give them a list of healthcare providers that offer this service, including a map showing where these care providers are.
healthcare provider finder
downloads
  • Downloads – Potential customers need to have access to as much information as possible when it comes to medical products, medications, and procedures. In most cases, these don’t need to be front-and-center on the product details page. They may be under a tab on the page, or customers can have these presented to them as they complete the paperwork prior to approval.
Giving Customers A Heads Up

Customers should be informed of any processes they might need to go through before they start. A customer doesn’t want to get three pages in only to discover they need to have the prescription in hand before they can continue, or that they were hoping to order the product in a couple of minutes but now need their PCP’s office address and phone number.

It’s also very important to manage the customer’s expectations no matter where they are in the process. If they believe that they can have a medicine shipped overnight but get to the final product details page to find out that their physician might not authorize them for another week, they’ll be frustrated and may not return to your site.

Tabs

Tabs on a page should be obvious but not intrusive. They are an excellent way to organize information that doesn’t need to be seen immediately but should be easily findable.

The important thing to remember is that a good product detail page can be catered to each product. In other words, every product can have dynamic content so that tabs (as well as any approval processes mentioned above) can be specific to each product. This might require a more powerful HIPAA-compliant website design than many CMS can offer.

hipaa website tabs
key takeaways

The Takeaway

Here’s what you really need to know:

  1. Product detail pages should be customized so that a customer can self-serve as much as possible.
  2. Inventory associated with products can be directly linked to inventory software, including ERPs and CRMs. This is especially important if you serve buying groups or bulk purchasers.
  3. Catering advanced product detail pages to your existing workflow can be just as just as good as starting from scratch with new software.

Work With Clarity

As you can see, product details pages can seem deceptively simple. But when used to their full potential, and when customized to add specific details to products that need them, advantages can be realized that many companies just don’t know about.

Are your product details doing enough to sell your products or services? Do they have the ability to walk customers through a workflow, including signoffs and authorizations? No matter what you need the product details page to do—or get started—Clarity can make it happen with a HIPAA-compliant patient portal, medical app, or website.

hipaa ecommerce development team
hipaa ecommerce development

We’d like to offer you a completely complimentary discovery process to address any needs you have with your product pages and what they can do. We’ll bring business analysts to the table, as well as a tech crew that can tell you just how it can be done. Whether you work with us after that or not is up to you, so get the process started today.

If you’re wondering how you can best customize your product page to your business and its workflow (and not the other way around), be sure to contact Clarity to find out about your options.

Related Posts

 
Author
 
Stephen Beer is a Content Writer at Clarity Ventures and has written about various tech industries for nearly a decade. He is determined to demystify HIPAA, integration, and eCommerce with easy-to-read, easy-to-understand articles to help businesses make the best decisions.