How CareLoop is Improving Healthcare Communication

UCHealth Denver tested the real-time social feed, CareLoop, and its effectiveness with regard to its spread of messages and information. CareLoop is essentially Facebook for patients; it is a medium that facilitates messages from medical professionals, questions from patients, test results, explanations, even providing users with information on possible symptoms and what they should be expecting in terms of certain procedures and medicines. Like most social media sites, CareLoop is a live feed, allowing patients to acquire their information and stay current up to the minute. Physicians and nurses have more opportunities to communicate with their patients without the necessity of a face-to-face visit.

The accessibility of CareLoop allows healthcare professionals to touch base with patients in a timely manner. The transfer of information can be done with relative ease; updates, results, tests, histories, can all be put into the system and messaging within CareLoop at leisure and with ease, making the system compatible with the increasingly busy schedules of healthcare professionals.

According to the survey taken by patients that were assigned CareLoop accounts in the ER, 96 percent liked getting updates from their doctors and nurses, 90 percent felt doctors and nurses were more responsive to their needs, 86 percent felt CareLoop patient communication technology benefited communication between providers and patients, and 96 percent would like to receive reminders from their doctors.

The CareLoop system is to work with any electronic health recording system, thereby allowing it to be utilized by large healthcare providers as well as family clinics. Its trial run with UCHealth Denver proved to be beneficial for all those involved, benefiting workflow, information coordination, and most importantly, the communication between healthcare providers and their patients.