A group of Dallas doctors has tapped the power of social networking to communicate with its patients.
During a dinner Tuesday night to celebrate the second anniversary of the Partnership for Peak Healthcare Performance, Karen Kennedy, CEO of the Medical Clinic of North Texas, reported that the medical group had recently "tweeted" patients who had previously agreed to receive communications via Twitter to alert them about the availability of the H1N1 vaccine.
This innovation is part of the medical group's ongoing effort to serve as a “medical home” for its patients, she explained. The medical group, which has had electronic medical records for 10 years now, is also preparing to communicate via e-mail with patients, according to Ms. Kennedy, who is negotiating with insurers about how doctors will be compensated for doing so.
The Medical Clinic of North Texas' strategic vision is to become the “premier multi-specialty group in the nation,” as well as “the most cost-efficient deliverer of patient-centered care,” Ms. Kennedy said during her presentation at the dinner, which was organized by the Dallas-Fort Worth Business Group on Health and sponsored by drug maker sanofi-aventis U.S.
The dinner also featured updates on the Partnership, a collaborative program launched by DFWBGH in 2007 to improve the quality of care for patients with chronic conditions.
In May, the Partnership distributed reports on diabetes care quality to 1,300 primary care physicians and endocrinologists throughout Dallas and Fort Worth. It was the group's first step toward future public reporting of such information.
Copyright © 2010 Crain Communications, Inc.
