What Is Health Action Network

Health Action Network provides a unique, powerful tool in your strategic approach to getting new clients, retaining former clients, care management, wellness, complementary and integrated medicine, health promotion and disease management.

The brilliance of the Health Action Network lies in a series of "information push" and “community building techniques" (utilizing phone, fax, email and the Internet) to establish and maintain a dynamic level of communication and interactivity among health care providers, potential customers, patients and former patients. 

Major Challenges and Opportunities in Health Care Today

• There is tremendous pressure to create relevant programming in care management that is low cost and low impact on current personnel and yet highly effective in building or sustaining a relationship with customers.
• Health care consumers tend to do little market research on where to go for care or how to approach care until a hospital stay is imminent. Once they know they need to be admitted it is usually too late to make an informed choice.
• Health care providers typically have a difficult time maintaining contact with patients once the acute and post acute phase of their illness has passed. There is no assurance that when these patients need a health care provider in the future, they will return to your institution for services.
• The media has positively influenced consumer demand for services that are complementary to acute care services.
• Most health care systems have written the “ideals” of health improvement - wellness, health promotion (health care not just disease care), healthy community activities, etc. - into their missions but still have a way to go before fulfilling those ideals.
• The Health Action Networks help to maximize these opportunities and meet these challenges.

What is Health Action

Health Action has been designing and building cutting edge programming and technology for the health care community for nearly 20 years.

In the “Networks” project, Health Action, establishes communities for patients and potential patients on behalf of health care providers. These networks are established around specific disease entities (initially cardiology, oncology and diabetes) to give patients suffering with these conditions a creditable source of information about their disease and available treatments.

Our sources come from both the conventional as well as the cutting edge of health care services. We want to make sure that your clients and future customers have access to good, creditable information and interactive activities that will be of use to them and deemed safe and effective by their care providers as they move through the curative process. We do this drawing from a menu of five “information push” and “internet community building” techniques that engage patients and customers in both knowledge and interactivity to complement clinical and health improvement services.

First, Informative Weekly Communiques

We communicate with participating member, patients and clients on a weekly basis (monthly if preferred). All of these communications are done in the name of the sponsor organization. The communications contain information relating to the patient’s condition (heart, cancer, diabetes) as well as general health improvement strategies. 

All communications are brief and to the point. We want to engage the patient, not overwhelm him/her with information. Each issue raised in the communication will contain a web based resource, at the Health Action Networks’ internet site where the patient can access additional information. The web based resource will carry the local provider logo. 

Second, Monthly Teleconference

Each network will offer a monthly teleconference on a subject of interest through a “phonebridge” that allows for up to 50 participants in a clear telephone connection. This teleconference will feature either a Health Action expert, one of your local care providers from the community or a national expert on a topic of dynamic interest. This will be an opportunity for network participants to experience motivating and informative presentations, ask questions and discuss the challenges and opportunities of their rehabilitation and recovery.

Third, Internet Based Information Resource Center

This web based resource center is a "gateway" to a wide array of tools and resources available for utilization for each participant to use at their own pace. It includes:

• Information concerning the particular disease management domains - Cancer, Heart, Diabetes.
• Archives of the weekly email messages.
• Tools, information and activities that are generally applicable to health improvement activities - self care, mind/body techniques and nutritional resources.
• A lively Discussion Forum
• Links to informative sites that are screened by Health Action and approved by your organization.
• Frequently Asked Questions - that can be modified to suit you organizational and clinical philosophy.

This resource center will appear as if it were within the domain of you institution’s own website and is a powerful way to build a dynamic community that fosters health improvement and creates a magnet for new business and the retention of current clients. 

Fourth, Interactive Peer Support Community

Research has demonstrated that participant interaction with others who are interested in health improvement and learning to cope with their health challenges creates improved clinical outcomes. The Health Action Networks all include a remarkable, interactive support process called The Circle of Life. This unique method for continuous health improvement that creates online support groups that engage in clarifying health improvement goals and fostering phased or gradual personal change.

Fifth, Health Coaching by Phone

An evolution of the “health coach on the phone”, this part of the program provides a set number of phone connections per year (usually four) wherein the customer experiences “live” contact to support their quest for health improvement.

Complementary to Your Clinical, Community Outreach and Marketing Objectives

The features of the Health Action Networks are completely complementary to your clinical services and are intended to be a low cost component of your complementary and integrated health care system - with benefits across the entire delivery continuum. In the clinical context, in the disease management, care management and population management context and in the wellness and health promotion context the above five tools provide a powerful, low cost method to foster health improvement. In community outreach, health status improvement, customer retention and marketing to expand market share the Health Action Networks will maximize your current strategies.

The Key Principles Behind Every Health Action Network

• The patient/customer is always better off with good information from a variety of sources so that he/she can, with the care giver, make good, informed health decisions.
• To be creditable, the flow of information should not in any way be determined or influenced by outside sponsorships or commercial interests. Health Action Networks do not participate in any advertising. The Networks are intended to be purely supportive and informative in nature and will be carefully tailored to complement the objectives of your organization. 
• Health Action Networks can engage potential customers before they are actually patients and involve them in a regimen that encourages a healthy lifestyle. Our goal is to prevent the need for hospitalization, when possible, while building and retaining customer loyalty. 
• We believe that this is a long term approach that increases the credibility of the provider in the community and strengthens its position over the long term. 
• Health Action Networks create a live and dynamic interactivity that functions on the level of a community. We are seeking to provide our local sponsors with a mechanism to maintain contact with former patients, foster improvement in current patients and establish a cutting edge kind of communication with consumers who are not yet patients.