In our personal lives, Americans have grown used to giving up personal information to technology in exchange for convenience. We manage passwords using smartphone keychain and apps. We share our emails, phone numbers and birthdays to get store coupons. We save our credit cards in online shopping carts.

As healthcare professionals, however, we are cautious—fearful, even—of dealing in personal information because of the 5-letter abbreviation that looms over our work: HIPAA.

HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, became law in 2002 and was designed to protect the private information of patients and to make sure they are well informed about their choices and their consent for those choices.

Yet even as far back as 2003, HIPAA recognized the need to balance patient privacy and efficiency for healthcare providers. In fact, HIPAA makes digital patient engagement, education and care management easier than you may think.

T. Berry Brazelton understood the value of connecting with his patients—and their parents

T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., had an extraordinary knack for interpreting the needs of infants and young children. But his greatest gift may have been the ability to zero in on the stress and anxiety of American parents, offering them just the right dose of comfort, acknowledgement and information.

All without ever really telling them what to do.

“I do not believe in telling people how to parent,” he once told me during an interview. “I don’t like parenting courses. I don’t think they really serve a purpose, and, in a way, they are negative. They say, ‘We know how to do it and you don’t.’

“I would rather expose what’s going on with the child and then what’s going on with the parent, and let them put the two together and see how to make sense of it.”

With Brazelton’s passing yesterday (2 months shy of his 100th birthday), children, parents, pediatricians and child development experts worldwide have lost a beloved caregiver and advocate. Following on the heels of revered child development expert Benjamin Spock, M.D., Brazelton has been called the nation’s last great parenting icon.

As the marketing team responsible for UNC REX Healthcare’s maternity service line, we’re constantly looking for better ways to improve women’s birth experiences at our hospital.

For most patients, their first time at our hospital is when they come to take a birth class in their third trimester, or when they are in labor and arrive to deliver. That means we have to earn their trust months before they actually use our services. Part of our strategy for improving patient experience includes reaching out to future patients to provide education and answer their care questions as early in their pregnancy journey as we can.

In the past year, we’ve made some improvements that have allowed us to connect with a larger percentage of these women, and sooner—as early as their first OB visit to community practices who deliver at the REX Women’s Center.

As more hospitals turn to same-day discharge for joint replacement patients, it’s more important than ever to make sure those patients know what to expect, how to care for themselves post-op and how to get the most from their recovery at home.