Decades after vaccines effectively wiped out serious diseases such as polio, measles and mumps in the United States, immunization—particularly for children—continues to be debated and even avoided. A notable minority of parents don’t keep up with their children’s vaccine schedule or forego immunization, citing concerns about vaccine safety, a link to autism (despite the lack of any definitive evidence), “too many” vaccines in the early childhood years, or their child’s distress at receiving an injection.

Your patients are looking for educational resources online.

In fact, about 7 out of 10 (72%) of adult Internet users say they have searched online for information about a range of health issues—especially specific diseases—according to Pew’s The Social Life of Health Information. 

A few weeks ago, we shared a blog post about Choosing the Right Patient Education Systems for the changing digital healthcare environment. We wrote about how the first step in an effective plan for real patient education or engagement is finding patient education systems that will help you connect with patients digitally—right where they are—online. 

Now that you understand the need to connect with patients digitally about their health, your next question is probably, “Who has the time?” That’s where APIs come in.

 

Patient education is no longer just what you want to do—it's what you need to do.

Consider that:

• Healthcare spending is out of control.
• Patients forget 80–90% of what they learn at doctors' appointments.
• ACA mandates that you go digital. 

But how do you choose the right patient education systems? There are so many tools that claim to provide patient engagement. How do you find the one that meets your hospital's needs? Here are a few things to look for.

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Engaging patients in their treatment plan and follow-up care is “very important” to improving patient care. 

 

This is according to 96% of nearly 3,000 M.D.s interviewed for athenahealth’s Epocrates Interoperation Research Study (4/10/15), conducted by EAS Planning.

Of course, this is important and very likely it has always been true for our nation’s docs. In the past, it was achieved through face-to-face interaction. Now these same things can be done digitally—if you choose your patient engagement solutions wisely.