#HCSM Review – Oct. 3 Edition

The HCSM Review is a peer-reviewed blog carnival for everyone interested in health care social media.

As the Director for the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, I’m focused on demonstrating practical benefits of social media for patients. So in my call for submissions, I asked for posts testifying to the ways social media has helped patients.

Some of the submissions related more to devices than social media directly, but here’s an interesting roundup:

A Dose of Reality

After 14 hours of beating myself up, I realized I wasn’t to blame for being the F-patient…

“I realize there is a lot of huzzah and hurrah about the e-patient out there—perhaps among those who have the skill or leisure to be so well connected to social media. At times, I believe I’m one of the fold. But what about the f-patient? The well-meaning, diligent user of social media who finds herself inexplicably … well, the most accurate way to put it is … “f’d” by the health care system?

“In a one-night stay at my beloved local hospital, I found myself – seasoned cardiac patient that I am – misconstrued as a narcotics monger, migraine patient, and generalized neurotic, gaseous female.

“I had my smart phone. But, no charger. As the hours progressed into double digits and I realized my predicament, the best use of my phone was to call my internist and cardio, because no one at the hospital had bothered to do so. I suppose I could have accessed facebook at some point and drained battery, but to what end? Would it have furthered my progress? Doubtful. And besides, I was preoccupied with my roommate’s ongoing constipation/diarrhea issues on the other side of the curtain.

“So, I battled my way through that hospital stay by enlisting the nurse, technician, charge nurse, and eventually, the cardiologists, to get some attention and eventual data. Upon returning home, bruised, battered, and covered in residual EKG/telemetry stick’em I realized my truth: F-patient. Or at least until I had some free time on my hands to google, facebook and tweet.” – Katherine Leon

Editor’s Note: I got to meet Katherine last year when she attended our Social Media Residency and participated in our Social Media Summit at Mayo Clinic. Read her story here in the Wall Street Journal. I was one of the co-authors of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings article about how she helped instigate rare disease research through social media. And I’m proud that through Social Media Residency we helped her start her blog.

Health Care Decision Aids

“Following is an interview with Dr David Arterburn of Group Health Research in Seattle, Washington.  Dr Arterburn and his team have implemented Decision Aids that help patients make important choices about medical and surgical procedures.  They have also done a study showing that these Decision Aids reduced costs for the hospital.  You can read more about decision aids and the study here.” – Joan Justice

Cell Phones to Screen for Hearing Loss

Sana AudioPulse, developed by the Sana international team of students from MIT and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Harvard, Northeastern and the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) in Brazil, allows healthcare personnel to screen for hearing loss with cellphones interfaced with specialized hardware.  Data is then securely transmitted  to a central database where a  trained audiologist will analyze it and store it in an electronic medical record.” – Joan Justice

Turning a Smartphone into a Healthcare Advocate

“So what does a family do when they need help and a private patient advocate isn’t an option? Currently, they might look for help from a community program, do some online research, or turn to their family and friends for answers….

“With your help, there will soon be another option: Grab your smartphones, or go online, and find help from the Pathfinder’s Virtual Advocate (PVA).” – Linda Adler

Happiness in the Real World

“So if you are not coping well what do you do to improve your ability to be resiliant and bounce back to at least a shadow of your former self?  How do you cope with pain, medications, numerous doctor appointments, and the feelings of guilt that you have for “letting people down” because you can no longer fill all of the roles that you could before?

“One place that you can find suppport is by talking to people who have similar problems to yours and these  days it is very easy to find them online, especially if you have a rare or less common disease.  I have been a member of a traditional online group for 7 years now and I get a lot of support and encouragement from the other members.” – Annette McKinnon

Also check out David Harlow’s roundup on Healthcamp Boston 2012.

The next HCSM Review host? SocialButterfly.

 

#HCSM Review Call for Submissions

How has using social media tools helped you maintain your wellness or manage a health-related condition?

On Wednesday, Oct. 3, SMUG will host HCSM Review—the peer-reviewed blog carnival for everyone interested in health care social media.

This edition will focus on the theme of practical benefits of social media in disease management and wellness.

Here’s my story of using social media relating to my Celiac Disease diagnosis.

What’s your story?

Submitting a post is easy. Simply email a link to your post or posts (no more than two submissions per author) by midnight (ET) on Oct. 2.

Format your submission email as follows:

Email Subject Line: HealthCare SocialMedia Review
Blog Title:
Blog URL:
Post Headline:
Permanent link to post:
Your Name: Name, Username, Nickname, or Pseudonym
Description or brief excerpt:

Learn more about HCSM Review by visiting HealthWorks Collective.

Delta Does Twitter Right

If you’re looking for an example of how customer service can be enhanced through Twitter, here’s a personal case study involving Delta Airlines and its @DeltaAssist account.

On Tuesday, due to some storms, the departure for my flight from Orlando was bumped back from 4:41 p.m. to 5:26, putting the ETA in Salt Lake City for my connection to San Francisco at 8:04.

Which was unfortunate since the flight to SFO was to depart at 8.

So I received an automated call from Delta while in Orlando telling me that my flight had been delayed and I would be rebooked. When I called to inquire about options, it turned out that the best they could do was to get me on an 8:30 flight Wednesday morning, arriving at 9:42 … only about two hours before my scheduled keynote in the Health Care and Life Sciences track at the Dreamforce conference.

Not an ideal situation, especially since I had a non-cancellable reservation in San Francisco and would need to also book a room in Salt Lake City. My Salesforce.com hosts would have been nervous, too.

But then a funny thing happened. Because of the delay, several people had switched bookings to go through Atlanta instead of SLC. That meant the plane boarded more quickly, and we were able to get off the ground by 5:28 EDT. And the pilot said he was going to try to make up time.

Then, as I tracked the flight’s progress using the onboard wifi, I saw that we were now estimated to land at 7:40. So, from 38,000 feet over Arkansas, I opened a Twitter conversation with @DeltaAssist and Irene O. Here are our private tweets:

As it turned out, we landed at 7:38 and got to the gate by 7:42. I was quickly off the plane and made it to the gate for SFO by 7:48, or about 2 minutes before the scheduled close of the boarding door.

I think it’s highly unlikely I would have been able to explain and organize everything if I had needed to wait until I landed. So this service probably saved me $150 or more since I didn’t have to get an extra hotel room.

At the very least it gave me peace of mind.

Thanks to Delta and Irene O. for showing how customer service should be done.

What examples do you have of companies using Twitter to improve customer service?

 

 

A Happy Week for the Aase Family

This was a week that will be long remembered for the Aase family and for the Austin High School basketball program, as my son Joe and nephew Tom, both two-time all-conference players returning this year for their senior seasons, accepted scholarship offers to play college basketball.

Austin hasn’t had a scholarship basketball player since 1999, so having two players accept offers in one week is quite a milestone. And it’s pretty cool that I’m related to both of them!

Joe committed to Davidson College (read about it here and here), while Tom is going to the University of Sioux Falls.

It’s great to have these decisions made, so the boys can focus on their high school season. With three starters returning from last year’s state tournament team, Austin is hoping to make some noise.