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Louisiana shares lessons learned from a year of patient engagement work

By Tom Sullivan

Louisiana launched a patient engagement campaign a little more than a year ago. Along the way, the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum found a few tactics for success that any healthcare provider should heed: Start small, know that certain demographics might surprise you and don’t merely presume the tech-savvy 18-24-year olds in your patient population will come to you.

The state's patient portal in particular achieved a tremendous increase in use, according to Jamie Martin, marketing and communications manager for the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum — as did patient awareness of the statewide health information exchange. Very few states can say that.

"We are opt-in, so for us this was an important goal," said Martin. "We wanted consumers to know what the HIE is, what it does and why they need to opt in. We were ultimately very pleased with the results."

Those results? The program already earned a 28 percent spike in the number of Louisianans tapping health technologies to better manage their health.

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