What to Include in Your Next Healthcare Website RFP

The Request for Proposal (RFP) is the most crucial document you need to create a successful healthcare website with the help of the right website design agency. More than that, making it as comprehensive as possible will ensure the final website is fully patient-centric, compliant, secure, and well-positioned to attract visitors. 

The RFP has to properly include and describe numerous components, from the project goals and technical requirements to the exact vendor requirements and budget.

With so much to cover, I want to give you a precise list of components to include in your next healthcare website RFP so you can easily find the right partner to design, develop, launch, and maintain your site.

A Quick Rundown of What to Include in a Healthcare Website RFP

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, covering every component in more detail, here’s a brief overview of the main components a detailed healthcare website RFP needs to cover so you can find the right healthcare website agency that will meet all your expectations:

• Overview of your organization
• Reasons and goals for the website
• Clear definition of the site’s target audience
• Exact project requirements
  
  • Products and services to include
  • Patient tools 
  • Technical requirements 
  • Functional requirements
  • Design and user experience
• Project timeline and budget
• Vendor requirements and evaluation criteria
• Guidelines for vendor proposal submission

Now that you have an outline of all the components to include, it’s time to elaborate on each one so you know what to focus on. 

Overview of Your Organization

You need to explain what your organization is at the start of the RFP. In essence, you should focus on your mission, vision, and values. 

However, it’s not enough to merely copy the content you want to put in your About Us page. The website agency needs to be your partner, so you need to fully explain what your organization is all about and what it seeks to achieve in the future. 

It’s also key to define your service scope and the physical facilities you have, like the number of locations or providers. 

If you already have a website, it’s a good idea to describe it here so vendors can establish your brand identity. However, you should also expand on the branding part to explain its maturity and strategic positioning. 

Depending on the size of your organization, cover the people and departments that will have a say in the whole project, so agencies know what to expect and how to set up their pricing.

Reasons and Goals for the Website

You need to clearly establish the reasons for having this site and the goals you’re trying to achieve. Naturally, objectives cannot be as simple as improving traffic. Your website is in the healthcare industry, so its goals should be aligned with operational efficiency, clinical outcomes, and patient satisfaction. 

The first step is to establish the "why" behind the project. Is this a rebrand or a merger? Or are you creating a new site as the old one is outdated?

Then you need to determine the objectives, the goals of the new website. Whether it's to increase patient volume, improve patient retention, or simply reduce manual tasks, you need to define the objectives clearly. 

In the end, you need to clearly define the measurable KPIs you want to improve, so the agency knows the numbers you’re looking to achieve with the site. 

Clear Definition of the Site’s Target Audience

It’s crucial to have a clearly defined target audience for your website in any industry, but it’s even more important in healthcare. This is primarily because people typically look for a healthcare-related product or service when they’re under stress or in pain, which is why it’s key to give them exactly what they are looking for. 

To do that, the website agency needs to know exactly who your target customer is so they can design the site to align with them. 

For instance, if the target audience are patients, you still need to define the type of patient. In other words, there’s a difference between a new patient, a returning patient, or a patient looking for credible information on symptoms and treatments. These differences need to be addressed through effective design and user experience.  

Exact Project Requirements

This should be the most important part of the RFP, the section that explains exactly what the website will offer in terms of products/services and how it will be designed. It should also cover both technical and functional requirements for the website. 

Products & Services and Patient Tools

The vendor needs to know the scale of the content the site will host, so you need to outline the service line architecture, meaning the exact departments that need dedicated sections on the site. 

You need to clearly define the high-utility patient tools for your healthcare site. This can cover anything from a provider directory to a patient e-prescribing portal. Whatever the case, it needs to be outlined in the RFP, and you must specify whether it’s to be built from scratch or delivered as a third-party embedded element. 

Technical Requirements

As with all websites, you need to decide on the CMS you’ll use. For instance, Webflow is ideal if you’re going for marketing agility. You can also state that you’re open to suggestions from the vendor. 

If you’re looking to have integrations like a CRM for marketing data or an EHR for patient data, you should outline your integration layer in the RFP. 

Being a healthcare website, you want the vendor to pay special attention to HIPAA and security, so it’s good to cover exactly what you need, like database encryption or SSL. 

Functional Requirements

This part will cover how the site will behave for visitors, so it’s good to mention the important features you want to see on your website, including: 

• Advanced search
• User roles
• Language localization

Design and User Experience

The exact design is typically up to the vendor, while you only need to approve their blueprints and request revisions. However, you still have to include your branding guidelines and specify how much the website agency can deviate from them.

You should also communicate what principles you want the vendor to follow for user experience. The most common requests here are a clean and calm interface that loads fast, but there are other important UX concepts that reduce drop-offs. 

Project Timeline and Budget

To get a solid proposal, you need to outline the timeline and budget. Naturally, you need to be as realistic as possible with both. 

When it comes to the budget, some organizations tend to leave it out to get a better deal. But given the complexity of the healthcare sector, it’s better to at least give an estimate. You can provide a clear budget range to allow some negotiation leeway. 

Naturally, take care of the specifics, like distinguishing between the initial budget that covers website design and development and the ongoing costs that cover CMS licensing, HIPAA compliance, and hosting. 

As for the timeline, you want to have a period in mind, but you also need to leave room for the vendor to share their own estimates of how long the project will take, especially for specific key milestones. 

Moreover, this part of the RFP should also ask the vendor about the warranty period, i.e. how long they’ll fix bugs for free after the site goes live. 

Vendor Requirements and Evaluation Criteria

This part will outline what you want the potential vendor to have and how you’ll grade the various ones that want to do business with you. 

You’ll want to focus on four broader categories: 

• Healthcare-specific expertise: Documentation for several healthcare website launches in the last few years. 
• Expertise in good UX and accessibility: Design is usually about equity and access in healthcare, so the vendor should demonstrate knowledge of good UX for your sector. Moreover, they should know how to create websites that meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines. 
• Technical depth and security: Outline that the vendor should have a security manifesto that covers its approach to key technical components, like HIPAA compliance and encryption.
• Cultural fit and support model: The vendor should have bios for all the team members who will work on the project. You should also state that you want the company to outline its support model. 

You can still go beyond these four categories or, more importantly, decide on your own what to cover under each one. In the end, ensure you give some form of a grading system that will show how important each criterion is to you. 

Guidelines for Vendor Proposal Submission

The last section of the healthcare website RFP focuses on logistics. With so many parties involved (vendors, stakeholders, legal oversight), it’s crucial to have a structured submission process to easily compare different vendors specializing in healthcare design. 

Establish a format and structure for proposals to avoid website agencies sending you countless fluff-filled pages. Ask for:

• A one-page elevator pitch, the executive summary
• A technical response that answers your security and integration needs
• A project team breakdown with bios and roles for individual members
• A rough breakdown of costs for the whole project

Consider adding a page limit to the proposal to encourage vendors to be as concise as possible and avoid unnecessary marketing jargon.

Then set up a communication protocol, i.e. when and how the vendor should contact you. Have a single point of contact and set a deadline for vendors to send questions. 

It’s also important to set a timeline with milestones so both you and the applicants have a clear roadmap for the entire vetting process. 

Lastly, determine in which format the vendors will send their proposals, like a PDF through email, for example. 

FAQ for Healthcare Website RFP Checklist