The Shirley Ryan AbilityLab improves access for vulnerable patient populations. // By Marcia Simon, APR // Traumatic injury of the brain or spine can be caused by a sports or work accident, age-related, or other medical issues. Whatever the cause, physical rehabilitation requires a significant amount of follow-up home care after a patient leaves the Read More
Community engagement is a cornerstone of public relations. Effectively breaking down the barriers to health care access is a far greater challenge. // By Marcia Simon, APR // How can a health system make a difference in utilization, quality and outcomes, and cost — and improve engagement with underserved members of its community? This was Read More
Connected care solves access and convenience issues for patients; real-time data from mobile devices allows physicians to monitor patients at home and intervene when necessary. // By Marcia Simon, APR // COVID escalated implementation of remote patient monitoring (RPM). Now, with the door pushed open, healthtech companies are competing to burst through and build clinical Read More
Patients speak from the heart about their health care experience at Geisinger in unscripted videos shot from their hometown. “What’s more powerful than that?” asks the health system’s marketing chief. // By Marcia Simon, APR // We’re all storytellers these days. Well-told stories have the power to influence behaviors and decisions. We tend to “lend Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // “Medicine and public health share a common mission … however, important differences have prevented their integration and effective working collaboration,” says the author of a 2020 NIH publication: Covid-19: An Imperative to Bridge the Gap Between Medicine and Public Health. The work of the King County Hospitals for a Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // CHI St. Vincent in Little Rock, Arkansas isn’t waiting for customers to come back on their own. The health system is proactively reaching out to them, using sophisticated analytics to define the target audience with precision accuracy. Infectious-disease specialists are beginning to give the all-clear signal to bring patients Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // Who wants to be part of a herd anyway? So why not call “herd immunity” “community immunity” instead? Hip Hop Public Health promotes Community Immunity as the ultimate act of love. Who doesn’t want more of that? COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has become the new challenge in conquering the pandemic. Getting Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // Just the notion that groups of people are overlooked or marginalized means there’s much work to be done to level the playing field. The past year of glaring health disparities revealed that health care as an industry needs to step up and root out biases, even when unconscious, that Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // When you have hundreds of runners raising money for you, and the Boston Marathon — usually held on the third Monday in April — gets canceled, how do you bounce back? Boston Children’s Hospital Trust, the pediatric hospital’s fundraising arm, found lots of ways to keep the donations flowing Read More
View from the C-Suite: Anthony Slonim, MD, DrPH, President and CEO at Renown Health // By Marcia Simon, APR // Leading the charge toward home care reimbursement parity and population health involves huge challenges. “You have to have a vision, you have to execute the vision, and you have to tell your story,” says Renown Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // Google is often the place people look first when seeking health information online. Assuming your health care system has done all the right things to optimize discoverability, the patient’s next step is to access care, most often by making a phone call. That first impression determines the course for Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // Telemedicine came to the rescue when COVID-19 first rattled the capacity and safety of health care delivery. It didn’t take long for hospitals, providers, and patients to embrace the conveniences, especially when federal waivers allowed for expanded access to virtual care services, and payers relaxed their reimbursement guidelines. Hospitals Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // Crisis management is a standard part of hospital communication preparedness, but who could ever have anticipated the coronavirus pandemic? How do you communicate to your community and patients about a pandemic when nobody anywhere has all the answers? Yale New Haven Health clinicians and ancillary staff quickly came together, Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // Quality and star ratings matter, according to Healthgrades: Patients treated at hospitals receiving a 5-star rating have a 49 percent lower risk of dying, and a 59 percent lower risk of experiencing one or more complications during a hospital stay than if they were treated at hospitals receiving a Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // Your communications team works hard to produce content that engages physicians. The problem is that your clinicians may completely ignore it. How do you get them to pay attention? Recruiting, retaining, and communicating effectively with your attending physicians affects everything from patient satisfaction and operating costs to hospital reputation Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // Boston Children’s Hospital and Atrium Health are among the pioneers of Alexa “skills,” similar to apps on a mobile device. Alexa’s HIPAA compliance has been a game changer, making it easier for users to quickly gain access to information they need. “Alexa, what is rotator cuff tendinitis?” “Alexa, where’s Read More
Are your providers losing patients because of access issues? A robust telemedicine program that offers convenient care for patients is one way to protect market share. Our new article by Marcia Simon, APR, explores how telemedicine brings subspecialties to outlying communities. Here’s an excerpt: Most of Gundersen Health System’s patients live at least 25 miles Read More
// By Marcia Simon, APR // Most of Gundersen Health System’s patients live at least 25 miles from the main hospital campus in La Crosse, Wisconsin. For the benefit of both patients and physicians, Gundersen invested early in telemedicine. Suburban and rural patients perceived distance as a barrier to seeing a specialist, so Gundersen started Read More