Digitized Patient Education: Instant Compliance and Automated Marketing

Challenge

To meet the qualifications of UNICEF’s “Baby Friendly Hospital” designation, SSM Health needed a flexible and efficient way to distribute patient education related to breastfeeding to new mothers. Additionally, SSM Health’s marketing department sought to target young mothers, whose decisions about the family’s health care can have reverberations for generations. Unfortunately, both efforts to engage new mothers with education and services were siloed, overly expensive, and ultimately ineffective.

Solution

People.Health collaborated with SSM clinicians to create an easy-to-use content management system enabling SSM to upload and standardize content across all their women’s health clinics and hospitals. Using People.Health’s Patient Education Genius, SSM providers can send patients Patient Messages containing education (not only pamphlets, but multimedia too) to patients via email or text message. People.Health’s Patient Messages also include patient resources for improved continuity of care (SSM new mother classes, additional education, etc.), as well as a virtual assistant (VA) that communicates with patients about SSM pediatric services. For instance, the VA asks patients about whether they needed pediatric services or a consultation. As the patient answers questions, the VA returns different SSM provider options that are geolocated as close to the patient’s home.

Results

People.Health dramatically reduced patient education delivery and distribution expenses while increasing efficiency and capability. For instance, before working with People.Health, SSM Health was unable to distribute videos. Our Patient Education Genius allowed for a highly efficient way to re-market services to existing SSM patients and keep their families within the SSM system. Additionally, Patient Education Genius provided new instant documentation for compliance with the Baby Friendly designation.