Perficient has created this series, “Responding to Healthcare Consumerism with Social Media” in order to identify the benefits and drawbacks of using social media and collaboration tools in healthcare, explore the doctor and patient communities currently interacting online, outline social media’s impact on the quality of care, and use current innovations to predict the future of social media collaboration in the healthcare industry.

Many have advocated for increased use of social media in the practice of healthcare.  However, healthcare social media advocates have been criticized for the lack of privacy and the partial picture of the patient that online interaction provide.  They argue that such a model would limit the quality of care. 

I agree that not all patient and doctor interaction can occur in traditional social media outlets.  However, new technologies are rapidly filling the current void to extend social media channels into a private, communication-rich online environment where patients and doctors can interact.  Using these advances in technology, I envision a world where traditional social media outlets, such as Twitter and Facebook, become a starting point for healthcare communications that can be fully integrated into care using advances in collaborative technology.  For example, a patient could ask a question in a traditional social forum, which becomes an invitation for further correspondence with a physician.  A doctor at a healthcare facility can reach out and respond by direct message, email, portal, phone call, and potentially an office visit.  The new office visit could be a traditional in-person visit, or a modern interpretation we’ll call the “cyber visit”.

A New Model for Delivering Healthcare

It is true that modern medical coding is needed to support new forms of doctor and patient communication, but social media has the power to revolutionize health insurance as well.  Let me introduce you to Hello Health.  Hello Health is a paperless primary care practice based in Brooklyn that uses social media to communicate with patients.  Hello Health touts “healthcare freedom” through the use of web-based patient communication, practice management, and electronic health records.  Instead of using health insurance, Hello Health requires a monthly enrollment fee.  With this fee, you can send an instant message to a doctor via a secure, HIPAA certified messaging tool.  An email response from the doctor is free, and patients are charged an additional fee for a “cyber visit”.  You can also get an appointment to come into the office, or you can pay for an actual house call. 

Hello Health has differentiated itself in the healthcare market as a low cost provider of highly interactive health care.  Collaborative technology is at the core of their plan.  Modern portals, like the ones at Hello Health, are revolutionary vehicles for providing high quality care in a collaborative environment.  Portals can be used to set appointments, view test results, request prescriptions, and facilitate communication with your doctor during “cyber visits”.  These technologies provide convenience and, according to our previous post, Increased Access to Data Increases Patient Satisfaction, increase patient satisfaction because they provide patients with what they are looking for in a modern healthcare provider.

Healthcare in the New Age

Powerful portal solutions fill the “patient information void” that so many healthcare professionals fear when considering these new socially-enabled forms of healthcare.  One example of a modern portal solution is the IBM Patient Empowerment System.  This recently revamped patient portal acts like a social network for participating patients.  The portal provides a platform where physicians and patients can work together toward their combined goals of better health.  The system also cross-checks patient interactions against past medical records to check for important events, such as potential drug interactions. 

Social technologies are also being used to enhance the quality of care for diabetic populations in low income areas.   In a joint effort between Microsoft and the University of Miami, a group of diabetes patients were given computers and trained on the Internet.  They were then able to communicate with doctors and nurse practitioners via portals.  The portal was used not only to transmit data about weight and self-administered blood sugar tests but also as a virtual classroom to learn about nutrition, exercise, and diabetes care.  Patients were enabled with the ability to send instant messages and email to their healthcare providers and to discuss their disease with other diabetes patients via discussion boards.  This technology shows promise for providers and health plans who are interested in managing chronic disease, especially for the uninsured.  I can imagine a similar application doing wonders in rural areas as well.

However, one void still remains.  How would a “cyber visit” accommodate care that must take place in person, such as listening to a patient’s heartbeat?  There’s a recent invention for that too!  I read a blog post from Dr. Joseph Kim  that announced one of the latest inventions in telemedicine, namely a scope-to-scope application by 3M, which gives physicians the ability to hear actual heart and body sounds in real time from any distance, even space.  Using this technology, and similar technologies that are surely on their way, doctors can provide care from across town, deep into rural areas, or even to astronauts at a space station. 

To wind up this series, I’ll provide you with some final thoughts.  Just as many of us use social media in the early stages of the sales consideration cycle, social media is a tool that can be used to engage patients in the early phases of healthcare.  Healthcare organizations can fill the need for high quality healthcare advice online through the creation of content that increases awareness of both better health and the healthcare organization in question.  These healthcare organizations can interact with current and potential patients via traditional social media outlets similar to Palo Alto Medical Foundation.  However, once deeper communications between patients and physicians are needed, innovations in collaborative technology can be used to provide a revolutionary, and cost effective,  new way to respond to healthcare consumers. 

The future of a social media enabled healthcare system is already here and being tested by revolutionary organizations at the cutting edge of science and technology.  By increasing the power of their collaborative networks, healthcare providers of this digital age can reach out  and enable healcare consumers.  They will reap competitive advantage as a result.

Perficient has created this series, “Responding to Healthcare Consumerism with Social Media” in order to identify the benefits and drawbacks of using social media and collaboration tools in healthcare, explore the doctor and patient communities currently interacting online, outline social media’s impact on the quality of care, and use current innovations to predict the future of social media collaboration in the healthcare industry.

Communication among doctors, patients, providers, and health plans are what healthcare networks are built upon.  If you take away this communication, then the network simply does not exist.  Today there are more ways to communicate than ever before.  Collaboration and social media, by way of portals, email, and webcasts, are drastically altering the old way of doing business in healthcare.

These new communication tools present both challenges and opportunities for healthcare organizations.  Two recent examples illustrate different approaches healthcare organizations have with regard to incorporating collaboration into a healthcare organization’s culture.  We will examine them here.

When Hospitals Don’t Participate

Like the majority of healthcare organizations, London Health Sciences Centre in Ontario, one of the most prestigious healthcare organizations in Canada, did not place heavy emphasis on collaboration and social media in their practice of healthcare.  With the lack of instruction on privacy issues surrounding social media in medicine, they stuck with the old way of doing business.  Enter Baby Joseph into the communication network at London Health.  Baby Joseph was a patient with a “severe and progressively deteriorating neurological condition.”  Baby Joseph’s parents were at odds with the hospital on their recommendations for care.  As a result, Baby Joseph’s family turned to social media.  They posted videos that soon went viral.  London Health was quickly in the midst of a PR firestorm as the communication that was occurring in their network, by way of social media channels, did not include their own expertise. 

“There was a lot of misinformation that was beginning to circulate in a variety of media, including the social media concepts,” said Mary Gillett, Director of Communications at London Health Sciences Centre.

This firestorm put London Health in a defensive position that they, at first, did not respond to.  They eventually entered the social media conversation in order to put out the flames.  However, given their lack of investment in the technologies necessary to open these new lines of communication, London Health was at a distinct disadvantage.  For purposes of this post, I will tip toe around the political debate surrounding this case and simply posit that healthcare organizations are often at the center of very emotional issues and decisions.  Social media has become a steam valve for issues of this nature.  By adding their voice to the conversation, healthcare organizations can continue to correct misleading information about healthcare issues and the care that they provide. 

When Hospitals Do Participate 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have healthcare organizations like Palo Alto Medical Foundation, which is leading the charge in social media.  Palo Alto regularly posts to their Facebook page, YouTube, and Twitter accounts.  They have found that social media is a natural extension to the other communication vehicles they use as a part of their network.  They have successfully used social media to dispense healthcare information and promote events.  Best yet, they have used social media and collaboration to build personal connections with their patients, doctors, and network hospitals.  In one case, a Facebook posting caught the attention of urgent care physician Dr. Enoch Choi at Palo Alto.  A patient of the facility posted that she was having difficulty sleeping and posted her sleep patterns as a graphic.  Dr. Choi immediately responded with “I can help you with that!” This is a great example of extending the lines of communication to grow a healthcare network.

Dr. Enoch Choi has been quoted as saying, “A doctor can show compassion online via social media and can make a difference.”

These two anecdotes symbolize an important movement occurring within the healthcare industry that those utilizing the “old way” of doing business will not realize.  Today’s healthcare consumers value engagement.  They want access to care, and they want open communication enabled by the technologies they use to communicate every day.  I am certain that I am not alone when I say that, in today’s world, I selected my personal physician, and the healthcare organization she is affiliated with, based on the technology she has at her disposal to communicate with me about my care.  By investing in these collaborative technologies, my physician can now count me, and many others, as part of an expanding healthcare network.