Texting habits like her daughter’s are part of the reason Children’s asthma management program now sends participants customized text messages with information on improving asthma management. The text messages “have helped to drive a higher engagement with the program,” says Ms. Arora. “We’ve really tailored the messages to the audience,” she says, noting the messages are tailored to where a patient is in the program and can also be sent in Spanish. Based on the success with the asthma program, Children’s Dallas is looking to extend similar programs to conditions like epilepsy.
The asthma program is not the only initiative to use mobile technology to better connect with patients and their families. Recently, the hospital began participating in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s “PHR Ignite Program.” This personal health record pilot allows patients to access their electronic medical records through a smartphone or tablet and receive medication alerts. “It does make a big difference in the timeliness of patients taking their medications,” says Ms. Arora. “It’s very exciting to be the first in the nation to leverage PHRs this way.”
Children’s Dallas is also working on making its website more mobile-friendly. “Over 50 percent of the traffic to our site is now from mobile,” says Ms. Arora, prompting Children’s to overhaul the look and feel of the website to improve a user’s experience on a mobile device.
“It just makes sense to use technology to reach them where they are,” says Ms. Arora of these programs, a reference to Children’s Dallas overall strategy for patient engagement. The hospital’s efforts to use technology to reach out directly to patients recently earned Children’s Dallas a spot in the top 50 on InformationWeek‘s annual list of the top 500 most innovative companies in the county.
Children’s efforts are becoming increasingly important, as there are an increasing number of patients the hospital is trying to reach. The pediatric care market in Dallas has grown at a rate four times higher than the national average between 2000 and 2012 and is expected to continue to grow at about three times the national average over the next five years, according to Ms. Arora. “Our market is growing so rapidly, and being able to leverage technical solutions to reach our populations is becoming increasingly important,” she says.
One of the hospital’s perennially popular patient engagement tools has been an online patient portal. The patient portal is a “window to the EMR,” says Ms. Arora, and also allows patients to message providers, request a medication refill and locate hospital forms.
The patient portal has undergone several updates as Ms. Arora’s team examines how patients are using the technology. Parents with more than one child can now access multiple patient records, and the interface has been adjusted to accommodate both parents and older pediatric patients who may be logging in themselves.
“We’re placing a significant focus on delivering personalized content to the right audience,” says Ms. Arora. “And we’ve seen it drive some very positive results.”
For other hospitals looking to engage a population as immersed in technology as the population Children’s Dallas serves, Ms. Arora recommends employing a dynamic approach that can be adapted as new technologies emerge.
“To make sure the patients have the information they need, you have to be ready to innovate,” she says, and be ready to embrace the technology patients are already using.
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