Engaging patients and families with healthcare has become vital to healthcare organizations today. It is indeed at the core of regulatory mandates, such as meaningful use and accountability care, resulting in performance-related pay and government incentives. Healthcare organizations achieve this objective to some extent through patient portals.

A patient portal is only part of the solution. Traditionally, patient portals address access to the care from health organizations. However, better engagement comes from people informing each other, and seeking support from each other. This is proven today through powerful social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Patients will soon look for the same experience from health care organizations with patient portals.

Recognizing this need, Jiatro came up with a social networking product called “HealthSocial” for health organizations. You can have this branded to match your hospital Web presence and can integrate it with your hospital data sources. HealthSocial not only provides community and online support functionality for patients, but is also a powerful word of mouth marketing engine for health care organizations.

Scenario:

CareCorp (fictitious hospital name) is a major hospital located in several places in a state and provides several services through its wide network of doctors. CareCorp has a patient portal called MyCareCorpChart that is branded to match with CareCorp’s Web presence and is integrated to CareCorp’s medical records. CareCorp’s patients visit MyCareCorpChart securely with a login to schedule appointments and view lab reports. CareCorp also has a community portal called MyCareCorpHealthSocial that is branded to match with CareCorp’s Web presence and is integrated with CareCorp’s doctors/service information.

Jacob Smith (fictitious patient name) is a patient at CareCorp. When he looks at his cholesterol reading at MyCareCorpChart, he wonders how other patients manage their hypertension and what treatments at CareCorp worked effectively. Jacob will be able to visit MyCareCorpHealthSocial to socialize with other patients at CareCorp. He will see other patients discussing their issues, observations and treatments related to Hypertension. Jacob can now build his own community by inviting other patients at CareCorp and by inviting friends from his social networks such as Facebook to provide him with support for his medical condition. He can now create his own journal noting his issues and observations and look to his community for advice and support. Jacob can also maintain lists of his care sources such as the doctors he is engaged with, clinical trials he is interested in and web links useful for medical conditions. All this information is private unless Jacob shares it with his community.

Whenever Jacob shares his treatment notes referencing a doctor or a service, other people can view more information about that CareCorp’s doctor or service. They can add to their own lists for future engagement or recommendation to others. This provides both viral and word of mouth marketing opportunities for CareCorp’s doctors and services.

If you are a Hospital or a Care Network like CareCorp, contact us today to learn how you can maximize your business potential with this innovative product for your patients.

HealthSocial is also available as a standalone Web site for healthcare consumers at http://www.myhealthsocial.com. You can view the site to learn more about the product.