Welcome
Welcome to the Health Action Network Site. Health Action
Networks provide a unique, powerful tool in your strategic
approach to getting new clients, retaining former clients,
care management, wellness, complementary and integrated medicine,
health promotion and disease management.
The brilliance of the Health Action Network lies in a series
of "information push" and “community building
techniques" (utilizing phone, fax e-mail and the Internet)
to establish and maintain a dynamic level of communication
and interactivity among health care providers, potential customers,
patients and former patients.
Major Challenges and Opportunities in Health Care Today:
- There is tremendous pressure to create relevant programming
in care management that is low cost and low impact on current
personnel and yet highly effective in building or sustaining
a relationship with customers.
- Health care consumers tend to do little market research
on where to go for care or how to approach care until a
hospital stay is imminent. Once they know they need to be
admitted it is usually too late to make an informed choice.
- Health care providers typically have a difficult time
maintaining contact with patients once the acute and post
acute phase of their illness has passed. There is no assurance
that when these patients need a health care provider in
the future, they will return to your institution for
services.
- The media has positively influenced consumer demand
for services that are complementary to acute care services.
- Most health care systems have written the “ideals”
of health improvement - wellness, health promotion
(health care not just disease care), healthy community activities,
etc. - into their missions but still have a way to go before
fulfilling those ideals.
- The Health Action Networks help to maximize these opportunities
and meet these challenges.
What is Health Action:
Health Action has been designing and building cutting edge
programming and technology for the health care community for
nearly 20 years.
In the “Networks” project, Health Action, establishes
communities for patients and potential patients on behalf
of health care providers. These networks are established around
specific disease entities (initially cardiology, oncology
and diabetes) to give patients suffering with these conditions
a creditable source of information about their disease and
available treatments.
Our sources come from both the conventional as well as the
cutting edge of health care services. We want to make sure
that your clients and future customers have access to good,
creditable information and interactive activities that will
be of use to them and deemed safe and effective by their care
providers as they move through the curative process. We do
this drawing from a menu of five “information push” and
“internet community building” techniques that engage
patients and customers in both knowledge and interactivity
to complement clinical and health improvement services.
First, Informative Weekly Communiques
We communicate with participating member, patients and clients
on a weekly basis (monthly if preferred). All of these communications
are done in the name of the sponsor organization. The communications
contain information relating to the patient’s condition
(heart, cancer, diabetes) as well as general health improvement
strategies.
All communications are brief and to the point. We want to
engage the patient, not overwhelm him/her with information.
Each issue raised in the communication will contain a web
based resource, at the Health Action Networks’ internet
site where the patient can access additional information.
The web based resource will carry the local provider logo.
Second, Monthly Teleconference
Each network will offer a monthly teleconference on a subject
of interest through a “phonebridge” that allows
for up to 50 participants in a clear telephone connection.
This teleconference will feature either a Health Action expert,
one of your local care providers from the community or a national
expert on a topic of dynamic interest. This will be an opportunity
for network participants to experience motivating and informative
presentations, ask questions and discuss the challenges and
opportunities of their rehabilitation and recovery.
Third, Internet Based Information Resource Center
This web based resource center is a "gateway"
to a wide array of tools and resources available for utilization
for each participant to use at their own pace. It includes:
- Information concerning the particular disease management
domains - Cancer, Heart, Diabetes.
- Archives of the weekly email messages.
- Tools, information and activities that are generally applicable
to health improvement activities - self care, mind/body
techniques and nutritional resources.
- A lively Discussion Forum
- Links to informative sites that are screened by Health
Action and approved by your organization.
- Frequently Asked Questions - that can be modified to suit
you organizational and clinical philosophy.
This resource center will appear as if it were within the
domain of you institution’s own website and is a powerful
way to build a dynamic community that fosters health improvement
and creates a magnet for new business and the retention of
current clients.
Please visit, the accompanying "Cardinal Health System"
is an example of how such a site might be structured.
Fourth, Interactive Peer Support Community
Research has demonstrated that participant interaction with
others who are interested in health improvement and learning
to cope with their health challenges creates improved clinical
outcomes. The Health Action Networks all include a remarkable,
interactive support process called “The Circle of Life”.
This unique method for continuous health improvement that
creates online support groups that engage in clarifying health
improvement goals and fostering phased or gradual personal
change.
Fifth, Personal Phone Counselor
An evolution of the “health counselor on the phone”,
this part of the program provides a set number of phone connections
per year (usually four) wherein the customer experiences “live”
contact to support their quest for health improvement.
Complementary to Your Clinical, Community Outreach and Marketing
Objectives
The features of the Health Action Networks are completely
complementary to your clinical services and are intended to
be a low cost component of your complementary and integrated
health care system - with benefits across the entire delivery
continuum. In the clinical context, in the disease management,
care management and population management context and in the
wellness and health promotion context the above five tools
provide a powerful, low cost method to foster health improvement.
In community outreach, health status improvement, customer
retention and marketing to expand market share the Health
Action Networks will maximize your current strategies.
The Key Principles Behind Every Health Action Network:
- The patient/customer is always better off with good information
from a variety of sources so that he/she can, with the care
giver, make good, informed health decisions.
- To be creditable, the flow of information should not in
any way be determined or influenced by outside sponsorships
or commercial interests. Health Action Networks do not participate
in any advertising. The Networks are intended to be purely
supportive and informative in nature and will be carefully
tailored to complement the objectives of your organization.
- Health Action Networks can engage potential customers
before they are actually patients and involve them in a
regimen that encourages a healthy lifestyle. Our goal is
to prevent the need for hospitalization, when possible,
while building and retaining customer loyalty.
- We believe that this is a long term approach that increases
the credibility of the provider in the community and strengthens
its position over the long term.
- Health Action Networks create a live and dynamic interactivity
that functions on the level of a community. We are seeking
to provide our local sponsors with a mechanism to maintain
contact with former patients, foster improvement in current
patients and establish a cutting edge kind of communication
with consumers who are not yet patients.
|
