The Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN) has announced a new consumer program that includes telemedicine and other services.
Through new tools and information, the program will offer patients access to their medical information, as reported to DHIN, and shared between their medical providers.
“When you provide transparency, you reduce the stress people feel when making healthcare decisions,” said Randy Farmer, DHIN’s chief operating officer. “Our goal with this consumer-facing program is to bring patients closer to their health information.
“Ultimately,” he continued, “this is at the core of our mission to facilitate better healthcare by improving communication and access to information. We want to make people aware of who we are and where we fit into the overarching healthcare landscape all the way down to their own personal plan of care.”
The program, which is supported by an advertising and educational campaign, offers three consumer-based tools that can connect Delawareans with their personal health care information across a variety of platforms.
The HealthCheck Alert app will send a secure text message to advise a subscriber of several items: that a medical result has been delivered to his or her doctor; that a medical professional has accessed the patient’s medical record; or that the subscriber has been admitted to the emergency room or hospital.
This free service will offer greater transparency of a patient’s healthcare information and may help to accelerate the identification of potentially fraudulent activity and abuse of health insurance information. It also helps improve care through better communication around patient care plans, a release stated.
“Let’s say you receive a secure text with information about your lab results being ready, but you haven’t had lab work done,” Stacey Haddock Schiller, DHIN’s director of marketing said. “You and your medical practitioner can immediately identify and prevent another individual’s health information from affecting your personal plan of care down the road.”
DHIN also promotes access to telemedicine service through MDLive. This online service provides around-the-clock access to a Delaware board-certified physician, whether at home, the office or on the go.
Doctors speak with patients by phone or video chat to diagnose non-emergency medical conditions and prescribe treatment, as appropriate. The service is available for $14.95 a month for an individual or $17.95 per month for a family – less than the cost of an emergency room copay, in many cases.
Health Check Connect is the cornerstone of DHIN’s consumer efforts. The personal health record (PHR) will help consumers access the same information that their medical caregivers see.
Personal health information reported into DHIN’s Community Health Record – test results, doctors’ notes and imaging studies, for example – will be made available through a secure portal for a patient to see and to add to with prescription information, vital statistics and data from personal health trackers.
The PHR will be interactive: it can help patients chart their progress towards reaching health goals, allow for the secure exchange of messages with health care providers and provide a dashboard for at-a-glance health profiles.
Consumers can learn more about and soon register for any or all three products at DHIN’s new consumer-oriented website, www.DHIN24seven.org.
To introduce consumers to DHIN and its patient-facing tools, the organization launched an integrated marketing campaign earlier this spring.
To showcase how DHIN creates better access to personal health information and patient engagement with healthcare professionals, a comprehensive advertising campaign consisting of television, radio, outdoor, print and digital advertising runs in all three counties.
The campaign, designed by a.s.a.p.r. Integrated Marketing, directs consumers to a new website, www.dhin24seven.org, which offers white board videos that explain how DHIN and its products work. It also further integrates DHIN’s accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, managed in conjunction with Four Dog Creative.
“The campaign is designed to bring complex and important topics in healthcare straight to consumers, giving them access to their records and promote understanding of how their information moves,” said Schiller. “The bright illustrations work to cut through the clutter and noise so that people are better informed. It’s all about empowerment.”
