Effective use of Social Media for enterprises is becoming more and more impressive. A lot of enterprises are either evaluating or debating on how to effectively use social media for business benefits.

Being part of the healthcare IT space, I wanted to analyze the benefits of using social media in the healthcare sector. Here is a small list which I came up with and I would appreciate if it can be extended by the readers through experience and innovation.

Enterprise Twitter

Twitter has already taken the world by swing and enterprise twitter for healthcare is a very useful application in my opinion. Typically physicians and other healthcare professionals are always under strict timelines. Updating useful information on the move is a wonderful idea.

For e.g. If there is a patient visit re-scheduled the reception can alert the physician through a tweet immediately.

If there is an emergency and a set of individuals are to be intimated, twittering the message makes it a convenient option.

General awareness campaigns whenever required can be carried out easily through an enterprise twitter kind of platform.

Social Presence for Brand Building

Like every other enterprise, brand building is an important aspect in Healthcare as well. Having social presence will significantly improve brand building exercise for the institution. Institutions can market new services and solutions during social interactions. Focused awareness campaigns and informational sessions would further strengthen institutions brand.

Enterprise Social Network Platform

While external social network platform act as catalysts to improve brand building, healthcare institutions can significantly increase their patient relationship management and collaborations with different stake holders within and surrounding the healthcare set-up by maintaining their own enterprise social network set-up.

SaaS based PHR

With preventive care becoming more and more important with the patients, sharing personal health record information is becoming increasingly critical. The next generation Software as a service model can be leveraged to share patients personal health record information through secure web based interfaces.

Test Reporting over Mobile or Collaborative Platforms

Next generation mobile and collaborative platforms can be leveraged to transfer various medical reports to the patients. While patient physical presence might be required for some of the medical reports, there are a lot of such reports, whose information can be transmitted to the patient over mobile. Information transmission becomes easier and faster and at the same time it is convenient for both the healthcare institutions and patients.

I am sure there will be many more scenarios where social media and next generation Information technology solutions will be useful in the healthcare vertical. I would be pleased to get more inputs from others.

I was just working on getting an idea of the benefits an EMR system can bring to the healthcare unit. I came across the following EMR benefits which I may append as I get to learn more

EMR Benefits

Complete data: System-wide EMRs have greatly increased the amount of
patient information by populating the database with outpatient office visits
as well as inpatient hospital stays.

Information accuracy: Electronic data entry eliminates misinformation
from illegible handwriting on patient charts.

Safer treatment: Complete medical records, including at least a problem
list, allergies and medications, leads to safer treatment. Regular use of alerts
makes physicians more aware of safety issues about patient treatment.

Collaboration and consultation: EMRs allow multiple clinicians to organize,
configure and view patient data in multiple ways, which encourages collaboration
and consultation about diagnosis and treatment.

Real time availability: All events on a patient’s record are entered upon
transaction, collected in a single file, kept up-to-date and available immediately.
Previously, clinicians waited for paperwork to arrive or initiated treatment
with an incomplete file.

Speed and length of stay: Use of EMRs, especially in ERs, reduces treatment
time and improves patient outcomes. Quicker, more accurate and
safer medical treatment facilitated by an EMR has been proven to reduce
the length of inpatient stay by 10 percent or more.

Stress reduction: A beneficial side effect of relying on the EMR for patient
care is reduction among clinicians of the incidence of pressure ulcers stage
2 or more from 4.2 percent to 1.5 percent.

Adverse Drug Reaction Events : EMR helps reducing adverse drug events in the inpatient setting as well as ambulatory settings

Evidence Based Recommendations : EMR systems can integrate evidence-based recommendations for preventive services (such as screening exams)
with patient data (such as age, sex, and family history) to identify patients needing specific services.

Templates for Consistency : Condition-specific encounter templates implemented in an EMR system can ensure consistent recording of disease specific clinical results, leading to better clinical decisions and outcomes

Increased Compliance to Preventive Care : Reminders to patients generated by EMR systems have been shown to increase patients’ compliance with preventive
care recommendations when the reminders are merely interjected into traditional outpatient workflows

Electronic Messaging : Electronic messaging offers a low-cost, efficient means of distributing reminders to patients and responding to patients’ inquiries

Remote Monitoring Systems : Remote monitoring systems can transmit patients’ vital signs and other biodata directly from their homes to their providers,allowing nurse case managers to respond quickly to incipient problems

Elapsed time from medication orders to medication dispensing. The Stage 6 benchmarks in this area appear to be 15 to 20 minutes for routine orders, and less than 10 minutes for STATS.

Diagnostic report turn-around. The Stage 6 hospitals are reporting turnaround times in minutes instead of hours.

Medication errors. Stage 6 hospitals are finding more medication errors, but
are also able to show significant reductions in medication errors. In one case a
hospital has prevented 170 wrong patient errors; 1,500 wrong drug errors; 203
wrong dose errors; 2,947 wrong time errors; and 26 wrong route errors out of
158,684 administered doses. Another facility reports that 42 percent of errors
attributed to handwriting have been eliminated, and omitted drugs have been
reduced by 70 percent.

Reduction in agency nurses. Two facilities reported a reduction in the use
of agency nurses, and one facility does not currently use agency nurses. One
facility reports that approximately $2 million of agency nursing costs has been
eliminated at their facility.

Reduction in nursing overtime. Only one facility reports a reduction in nursing
overtime that has resulted in a $300,000 annual savings. Most of the Stage 6
hospitals report they have not seen any reduction in nursing overtime. One of
the facilities reported that since nurses are documenting at the bedside, the time
saved is being used for patient care. One organization reported that nursing
overtime is actually increased. It is apparent from the diversity of results that
regional and competitive environments will continue to produce varied results
on this subject

Length of Stay (LOS). The Stage 6 hospitals sharing metrics in this area had
either reduced their LOS metrics or maintained the same LOS metrics with
increasing census and acuity. HIMSS Analytics is conducting research on the
correlation of EMRAM stages/scores and LOS that is projected to be published
in September 2007. What we are finding to date is a reverse correlation – higher
EMRAM stages/scores have a reverse correlation to LOS (the higher the score
the lower the LOS).

Billing. This question was asked relative to the HIPAA Claims Attachment
regulations that will be effective within the next 24 to 36 months. Currently one
Stage 6 hospital reports a reduction in the time it takes to post both inpatient and
outpatient bills. Another hospital reports improvements in charge capture.

Claims Denials. Coding denials at one facility dropped from 9.2 to 2.2 percent
and overall denials dropped from 23 to 10 percent

Competitive market advantages. There were many responses given by Stage 6
hospitals in this area. Most of the responses were centered around patient safety
and clinician support to facilitate better patient care with aggressive marketing
of their EMR advantages to win patients via radio, TV, and Web/portal
marketing programs.