As healthcare providers seek improved customer relationship management to best accommodate their patients, a once largely overlooked outlet, online discussion groups, may be the answer to enhance and move directed communication.

In “Ethnographic Discovery of Adverse Events in Patient Online Discussions: Customer Relationship Management ”, an article from a recent issue of the International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics (Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Joseph Tan, Wayne State University, USA), researcher Dr. Roy Rada, University of Maryland Baltimore County (USA), looks at how a healthcare provider can extend its customer relationship management program by sponsoring an online, patient discussion group.

“Patients in online groups hold a unique and valuable position because of their sheer numbers and an intense focus on their shared illness,” writes Rada. “Healthcare entities might benefit by paying further attention to the content of these groups.”

Healthcare professionals have many demands on their time and often do not see participation in an online patient discussion group as a cost-effective use of their time. For the typical health care provider in the United States, efforts in an online discussion group cannot be billed to a health insurance company on behalf of the patients in the group. On the other hand, some healthcare entities have found that the goodwill generated by sponsoring an online discussion site stimulates financial patients. Rada believes that a financial cost-benefit analysis that considered a wide range of factors, such as staff cost and patient loyalty, would be appropriate before an entry decided how much, if anything, to invest in online patient discussion groups.

(Portions of this article were taken from the Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics - Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Roy Rada.)