The reform of the healthcare system has been one of the major agendas of the Obama Administration. An aging population with rising trends in chronic illnesses has seen a surge in demand for care providers, but the ever increasing healthcare costs are making even some basic healthcare unaffordable, leaving many uninsured or underinsured.  It is ironic that, despite a market driven economy, a patient (consumer) is unable to negotiate a price for the service provided by the hospital – such as a performance based payment for service rendered. The prices are negotiated by health insurance providers and hospitals, which have exactly divergent interests at stake.  About 20bn dollars have been earmarked for reforms especially to make basic healthcare affordable for everyone by streamlining efficiencies and better collaboration between health insurance companies, care providers and patients.

There have been many fragmented attempts by hospitals to increase efficiencies through better management of Electronic Health Records (EHR), investments in Hospital Information Technology (HIT) and collaboration and interoperability between regional health providers in the form of Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIO) etc. But much needs to be done.

Human beings are social animals and they behave and listen to the common wisdom of the crowd….see facebook, myspace, twitter, and host of blogs and forums. Hospitals could perhaps leverage this human behavior and embrace some of the social media tools to distribute information and engage patients in a participative manner. Such a social engagement would foster a sense of community among like minded patients suffering from similar chronic ailments such as diabetes, heart problems; obesity etc. The patients can learn from others experiences and such an informally informed patient would be more willing to make lifestyle changes in prevention and cure of similar diseases. For example in www.patientslikeme.com people not only learn and share their experiences, but this provides a valuable source of information for physician, hospitals and drug manufacturers in providing a treatment.

Common among such social media tools that could be used effectively are patient blogs and physician blogs, community forums and message boards, audio/video Podcasts by physicians, success stories by patients etc. Ultimately, at the end of the day when the patient knows what to expect – he/she would be ready for the choices. An informed patient usually would make the right choices, which is fundamental to the treatments of come of common chronic ailments especially lifestyle based such as diabetes, hypertension etc.

The California Healthcare Foundation has a great report on the same.