Monday, April 21, 2008

CarePages at BIDMC

A suggestion from e-Patient Dave after his treatment at our hospital last year prompted us to start offering Carepages to our patients. The idea is to make it easy for people to create and update a private and personalized web page where they can share their latest news with friends and family and receive messages of support. There is no charge to the patient for this service.

Similar services had been available to patients if they made an effort to find them, but Dave was right to suggest that we offer it directly. For some reason, we were a bit behind the times on this matter, and I am glad he pointed it out to us.

Proving again that patients really have good ideas about how to make life better for patients. Duh!

2 comments:

e-Patient Dave said...

Thanks for the kind words. :) Not to put too fine a point on it, but I made that suggestion well *before* my treatment started, and I'm glad I did.

Patients and families, be aware: the sooner you start an online community, the sooner you'll (a) experience their support, (b) experience the relief of being able to update just about everyone with a single web posting, 24/7, instead of many phone calls or emails.

There's therapeutic value, too, in having the experience of a support network. This e-patient blog post cites an article in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons saying "patients with larger social networks showed better outcomes."

Not bad for free. Do it, and tell others about it too.

(Disclaimer: I'm not involved with CarePages, and it's not the platform I used myself. I'm just sayin'.)

Anonymous said...

CarePages is owned by Revolution Health. I can easily put you in touch with the right folks to help you get this great service to your patients. :) Just say the word.