Kaiser Permanente // brand tags // Getting Ready for HIMSS 2010

Kaiser Brandtags

Kaiser Permanente // brand tags – Catching up on Jay Parksinson’s blog reminded me about this great little site. Although Jay uses the lookup of Mayo to illustrate a point about the health care industry focused on sickness, the lookup of Kaiser Permanente doesn’t follow on that theme….

…and the methodology anyway is more “fun” than accurate. However, the result for Kaiser Permanente does reflect the theme of a talk that Holly Potter and I are giving at HIMSS 2010 this year.

We’re calling it Driving Total Health with Health IT and Health 2.0, and we’re finishing it up now.

The title out of context is probably a little confusing. We were asked to talk about the impact of social media in what we do (surprise).

We are trying to make the point that getting engaged with patients/members where they live work and play using an electronic health record / personal health record, is naturally going to lead into engaging with them outside of the health care transaction. And this (HIT and Health 2.0) is a means, not the end, to helping people achieve their life goals through optimal health.

Holly and I gave a similar talk at Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, and we are retooling it a bit for this (HIMSS) audience, with some new patient stories and experience that we’ve had since then.

If you are going to HIMSS (or if you aren’t) and you have ideas for us about what would be useful to hear about, please feel free to post in the comments. This is my first HIMSS ever….

(PS, on a similar note about patient involvement, colleague Kate Christensen, MD, and e-Patient Dave, will also be speaking)

4 Comments

Ted: not sure this fits your talk, but it has been on mind a lot lately. How do we handle the conversation that goes beyond the health transaction and goes into the financing/customer service realm? I believe providers need to become more knowledgeable on finance and insurance, but they will never be experts. To me, this suggests more attention on engaging non-clinical support staff in social media conversations. I am intrigued by Best Buy's Twelp community of techies on Twitter. They provide a never ending stream of knowledge that is used nationwide by Best Buy's front line.

Hi Steve,

I have been doing a little extra thinking about your comment because I know you're an expert in these parts! Are you thinking about a member-services function?

It is well known in my community that if you have a problem with your cable/internet connection, you just tweet anything with that company's name and you get help. If you direct-message your phone number, they'll analyze your connection and tell you more than you could learn by calling on the phone and explaining what's going on. (You can see it in action here.

I say, "sure, why not?"

Is that what you were thinking or another application? I don't know how getting permission to access a person's account via twitter in health care (the business side, not the clinical side, are the rules different?) is different than in cable television. Anyone else know of a health care organization doing this?

Hi Ted!

I am really looking forward to this talk, I can't wait to here what you guys have to say. See you at HIMSS!

-Hannah

Ted Eytan, MD