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Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare systems and a variety of other healthcare entities have been sending lots of text messages to patients. Reminders about appointment, prompts to take medications, health information updates — they are part of healthcare’s new enthusiasm for all things digital and remote.

For example, customer communication and payments platform Podium recently 

, a large healthcare system in southern California, which will use Podium’s tools to automatically invite patients to leave a review via text or the messaging app of their choice.

“Research shows that fast and easy to complete review requests are ideal, and result in more accurate feedback. This integration will save caregivers’ time as well as increase the number and quality of their online reviews on Google, Facebook, Healthgrades and other key sites,” Podium said in a press release.

While text messaging can be effective in communicating with patients, is there such a thing as text message fatigue?

, patients who receive multiple text and interactive voice response (IVR) telephone messages from healthcare systems are more likely to opt out of future messages.

Researchers at Kaiser Permanente Colorado conducted a retrospective study of members who received 1 or more automated text or IVR message between October 2018 and September 2019.

In the cohort study of more than 428,000 patients, 84.1% received 1 or more text messages while the median was 4 messages and 67.8% received 1 or more IVR messages (a median of 3 messages).

Nearly 3% (2.5%) of members opted out of future text messages and 1.5% opted out of interactive voice response messages. Individuals who received 10 to 20 text messages per year or 2 or more IVR phone calls were significantly more likely to opt out.

Individuals opting out of text messages were also more likely to opt out of IVR messages and vice versa, the researchers found.

“The findings suggest that a high volume of automated health care messages may be associated with a greater likelihood of patients opting out of future messages and that health care systems should use these messages judiciously to minimize message fatigue,” the researchers wrote.

Articles

Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare systems and a variety of other healthcare entities have been sending lots of text messages to patients. Reminders about appointment, prompts to take medications, health information updates — they are part of healthcare’s new enthusiasm for all things digital and remote.









When it Comes to Text Messaging with Patients, How Much is Too Much?

African Americans are significantly less likely to get a COVID-19 vaccination, and hesitancy is particularly prevalent in South Carolina and the Southeast U.S., a new survey says.

To address the problem, a number of South Carolina community organizations are developing a pubic health education campaign in communities where vaccine hesitancy remains prevalent.

While 28.5% of African Americans nationwide are “very likely” to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, only 19.3% of African Americans in the Southeast United States are also "very likely" to get it, according to the ADoH SCIENTIFIC survey. 

On the other hand, 22.8% of African Americans in the Southeast say they are “very unlikely” to receive the vaccine, ADoH said in a 

Conversely, 50.7% of whites in the Southeast and 50.6% nationwide are “very likely” to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the survey.

White respondents reported largely positive emotional responses to the prospect of vaccination, while African American respondents reported largely negative emotions.

“Fear is clearly a major driver of vaccine hesitancy, and not the only one,” said Dr. Brian Sullivan, PsyD, chief science officer at ADoH SCIENTIFIC. “It’s critically important to understand the variety and intensities of feelings driving this hesitancy.”

The data from ADoH SCIENTIFIC will be used by a consortium of South Carolina-based community organizations, including 

, to develop the “I Got It!” Campaign. The campaign will harness the emotional insights from the study to “dispel historical myths, engage the Black community, calm fears and inspire vaccine uptake,” said Tony Clark, director of community outreach and development at Closing the Gap in Healthcare.

“The COVID-19 crisis is hurting all our communities, but not equally. It is more important now than ever that we clearly communicate the importance of taking the COVID-19 vaccine to communities of color across the U.S, but particularly in Black communities in South Carolina and the Southeast,” said Dr. Kylon Jerome Middleton, senior pastor at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church and Charleston County Councilman - District 6.

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Common Among African Americans in the Southeast 

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed nearly every aspect of healthcare, including home health treatment. Technological and other advances have made in possible to provide high quality, safe care to patients at home.

Now a group of healthcare providers, value-based care companies and Amazon’s in-house telehealth service is calling for changes in reimbursement so care provided in people’s homes can be paid for. It is time to “change reimbursement models and the culture around institutional care to allow for Americans to choose their home as a site of care,” the newly-formed organization 

Founding members of the coalition, include 

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the untapped potential of home-based clinical care, noted the press release, which mentioned that care delivered at home can range from primary care to hospital-level treatment.

“The advent of telehealth, remote monitoring, digital therapeutics, provider home visiting, medical records sharing, and other technology has shown that care in the home can be at least equivalent to, if not better than, care offered in facilities,” the newly formed organization said.

Re-locating healthcare so more of it occurs in people’s homes could reduce healthcare spending. CMS estimated home healthcare in Medicare saves at least $378 million a year in just the 9 states that are part of the Home Health Value Based Purchasing innovation program through a reduction on unnecessary hospitalizations and skilled nursing facility usage, Moving Health Home Spokesperson Kristen Ratcliff McGovern told

Almost 1 in 5 Medicare beneficiaries have six or more chronic conditions, so in-home, patient-centered care is “critical to managing the complex health needs of our nation's older adults,” said Nick Loporcaro, Landmark Health CEO, in the press release.

Among several other initiatives, Moving Health Home will be pushing for CMS and the Congress to retain the hospital-without-walls site of care flexibilities permitted during the COVID-19 public health emergency.

“We know 48 health systems and 109 hospitals have already taken advantage of Acute Hospital Care at Home flexibilities, greatly expanding patient access to home-based hospital services,” Ratcliff McGovern said. “However, without policy change, these flexibilities are set to expire after the PHE (public health emergency).”

Amazon Health and Others Form Group to Push for More At-Home Care 

In the first study of its kind, researchers found a majority of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) also experience eye issues such as sore eyes and light sensitivity.

In fact, 81% of COVID-19 patients reported ocular issues within two weeks of other disease-related symptoms, according to the new research published in the journal 

 Of those, 80% said their eye problems lasted less than two weeks.

“This is the first study to investigate the various eye symptoms indicative of conjunctivitis in relation to COVID-19, their time frame in relation to other well-known COVID-19 symptoms, and their duration,” lead author Shahina Pardhan, Ph.D., professor and director of the Vision and Eye Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, U.K., said in a 

Sore eyes were significantly more common when the participants had COVID-19, with 16% reporting the issue as one of their symptoms. Only 5% reported having had the condition beforehand, according to a survey of 83 people.

While 18% of patients reported suffering from photophobia (light sensitivity) as one of their symptoms, this was only a 5% increase from their pre-COVID-19 state.

The most common reported symptoms overall were fatigue (suffered by 90% of respondents), a fever (76%), and a dry cough (66%).

“While it is important that ocular symptoms are included in the list of possible COVID-19 symptoms, we argue that sore eyes should replace ‘conjunctivitis’ as it is important to differentiate from symptoms of other types of infections, such as bacterial infections, which manifest as mucous discharge or gritty eyes,” Pardhan said.

“This study is important because it helps us understand more about how COVID-19 can infect the conjunctiva and how this then allows the virus to spread through the body,” Pardhan added.

The study investigates the various eye symptoms indicative of conjunctivitis in relation to COVID-19.

Christine Blank

Articles

When it Comes to Text Messaging with Patients, How Much is Too Much?

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Common Among African Americans in the Southeast

Amazon Health and Others Form Group to Push for More At-Home Care

Eye Problems Common in COVID-19 Patients