texting

Following some confusion, a Survey & Certification Letter sent last week has reaffirmed CMS’s stance on texting patient information, specifying that messages sent among clinicians are permissible so long as healthcare teams use a secure platform.

Adding educational health content to text reminders for influenza vaccines improves the effectiveness of those texts, when compared with written reminders and texts that do not offer extra health information, according to a study of 660 children published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

As a group, about 35 percent of baby boomers were interested in using their smartphone to learn about and better manage their own health, according to results from a survey conducted by academic researchers in late 2010.

HealthCrowd, text-message-based patient engagement strategy, has completed a pilot with New York Medicaid plan Healthfirst, showing that 86 percent of Healthfirst's Medicaid population was equipped to receive text messages.