4 Traits of Health Content That Engages and Satisfies

Patient education can be one of healthcare providers’ most effective tools in today’s value-based care systems. By setting patient expectations, promoting behavior change and measuring adherence to a care plan, it can improve outcomes and have financial benefits.

At UbiCare, we call this kind of patient education “architected” content because of the research, thought and strategy that goes into its construct. It’s designed to engage patients, improve care outcomes and increase satisfaction for patients and healthcare providers alike.

No matter what you call it, patient engagement technology fueled by evidence-based, carefully “architected” content has several important elements.

There are many great reasons why hospitals choose to work toward baby-friendly hospital status. There are also plenty of ways to encourage breastfeeding in line with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidelines, without having that official Baby-Friendly Hospital title.

Whether or not you’re pursuing baby-friendly status, your hospital can effectively support breastfeeding promotion among staff and patients. Here are 5 ways to go about it:

What Concerns About This Common Surgery Teach Us About Patient Engagement

The most recent issue of Consumer Reports had some pointed words about hospitals with high rates of Cesarean section deliveries. In an article detailing its evaluation of C-section rates in 1,200 hospitals nationwide, the consumer advocacy journal concludes that, in low-risk pregnancies, the biggest determinant that a woman will have a C-section may be the hospital where she chooses to deliver her baby.

It isn’t the first time an inferred link between C-sections and hospital practice has made headlines. The New York Times ran an opinion piece in January saying the same thing.

About 1 in 3 newborns (nearly 1.3 million babies) are delivered by C-section in U.S. hospitals each year. The surgery has been the most commonly performed operating room procedure here for almost a decade, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Improving the patient experience with rehabilitation and recovery after joint surgery counts big in CMS’s new Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) payment model. So it behooves hospitals to manage patient expectations about their discharge destination and rehab care as early in the care episode as possible.