The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has proposed a shift in the delivery of postpartum care to try to curb increasing maternal mortality rates. In a committee opinion issued this month, ACOG specifically names using technology such as email and text among effective strategies for increasing patient engagement and attendance at postpartum visits.

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.

For some time now, health systems have been expected to use digital technology to manage a patient’s episode of care beyond the doctor’s office or hospital.

Harnessing the wealth of data on patient populations experiencing the same care episodes, digital health technology can connect providers with their patients safely, efficiently and on a large scale.

Best of all, providers can guide whole populations through their care in a way that feels extremely personal to patients.

This infographic offers some insight. 

Reaching your patients through the technology they already use is key to patient engagement and activation

With new tools like Snapchat and Boomerang popping up every day, sometimes it seems like communication technology seems to change faster than we can keep up with. That has led some hospitals to rush into creating an app or join the latest social media platform. Others continue to lag behind, using paper and telephone as the primary communication methods used to engage patients.

But some hospitals recognize that patients want to communicate the way they do in daily life. Email and text have an important place in patient-provider communication and remain patients' top choices for connecting with their doctors outside the medical office or hospital walls.

In fact, when it comes to improving health outcomes, your best bet for communicating with patients is a combined approach: mobile-responsive email and text.