Patient Experience

Healthgrades, an online resource for patients seeking information on physicians and hospitals, has redesigned its website to make it easier for patients to search for and book appointments with providers.

St. Louis Children's Hospital now offers families of surgical patients access to a new HIPPA-compliant secure texting service that allows clinicians to update families in real-time from inside the operating room.

At Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, it's not uncommon to see toys as well as human patients recovering from surgery, according to a post on the hospital's blog.

Using video call applications like Skype to engage breast cancer survivors in an online as exercise program can help patients mitigate side effects of treatment like pain, fatigue and strength loss, according to a study published in the journal Cancer.

Welltok, a consumer health software company, has tapped IBM Watson Health for its CaféWell Health Optimization Platform.

San Francisco-based Dignity Health has partnered with Docent Health — a Boston-based healthcare technology startup — to offer a new program aimed at improving the maternity experience of expectant mothers at its hospitals.

The Hospital of Providence in El Paso, Texas, the El Paso Times and the gamification software company OfferCraft collaborated to create an online game to educate people on liver disease prevention.

Norfolk, Va-based Sentara Healthcare's regional air ambulance, Nightingale, took its first flight Feb. 25, 1984 and has since completed more than 18,000 accident-free flights.

With the recent news that the CMS' Bundle Payment Program has delivered "mixed results" during its initial year under operation, there remains an eagerness among providers and payers to identify best practices for success in these total cost-of-care initiatives.

Filling a void, the National Quality Forum released Tuesday the first national standards for healthcare decision aids, used to improve shared decision-making between providers and patients.