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Bennett steers MUSChealth.com on new course by Heather Murphy  Public Relations Dave Bennett, web resources manager, is to the MUSC Web site what Captain Kirk was to the Starship Enterprise; he plans to boldly go where no one has gone before.  With vision and experience, Bennett joined the Marketing department in June. Web resources manager, Dave Bennett. “I actually was employed here in the early '80s in the pathology department,” Bennett said. “It amazes me how many people were here then and are still here today. Except now all of the doctors I knew are vice presidents and full professors.” A graduate of MUSC’s College of Allied Health Sciences, Bennett reconnected with MUSC while his father was in the hospital with a terminal illness. He stepped down from his position at BioReference Inc. in Virginia to care for his father and tend to some family business.  During that time, a friend mentioned a position opening in Marketing Services for a new Web resources manager. Interested in getting back into “ehealthcare,” Bennett made the call. He soon relocated to Mount Pleasant with wife Mimi, son Dalton, 15, daughter Paige, 13, and 10-year-old twins Matthew and Leigh Ann. At MUSC, Bennett’s position entails much more than simply working out kinks or adding new info to MUSChealth.com.  Upon his arrival, Bennett went straight into warp speed with an acquired content management system that will essentially allow anyone employed with MUSC to place relevant clinical or medical information on the Web site. “The system is designed to allow physicians, nurses, etc. to maintain pertinent and important information on their own, thus speeding up the process of getting things onto the Web by decentralizing the process,” Bennett said. “This system provides the ability to put out more information faster for the general public and also serves to help develop the Intranet within the hospital.” Pulling from experience in developing similar systems and programs for companies like BioReference and its Web portal http://www.careevolve.com, New Course Education Incorporated and GeneCare Medical Genetics Centers, Bennett plans to create a “physician- based Web portal” while continuing to improve the current consumer site, MUSChealth.com.  “We are investigating and working on a series of improvements to our consumer site including easier navigation, new content like streaming media, new health assessment tools, patient online bill review and payment, to mention a few,” Bennett said. His primary goal with this creation will be to focus attention on MUSC services and encourage referring physicians to use those services, all while becoming more efficient in serving the patient population and in practice. “A series of recent studies indicate that 96 percent of physicians use the Internet for some purpose. Further, 60 percent of the 73 percent of patients with online access to health care information are more likely to take proactive steps as a result of the Internet health care research they have done on their own, including scheduling a doctor’s appointment,” he said. “We want to keep the site cutting edge and continue to provide an overall positive impact within the community through the transmission of information and services on the site. “My predecessors did a wonderful job of getting the site where it is today. My job is to make this a ‘sticky’ site, meaning that we continue to move away from posting static information and keep people coming back to the site as their main medical resource while ultimately improving the efficiency and delivery of health care.”   Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.