The Effectiveness of Personalized Electronic Patient Management Messaging Following Lumbar Spinal Fusion

A Paper Presented by Louis Jenis, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, at the Lumbar Spine Research Society 10th Annual Meeting, 2017

Published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgical Focus, Apr 2017/Vol 42/No. 4/Pages A1-A40

While much focus has been on placed on preoperative patient periods, less attention has been given to the immediate postoperative period and identifying potential means of motivating patients and directing behaviors.

PatientBond was used to engage patients during both preoperative and postoperative periods to motivate healthy behaviors and reduce the risk of hospital readmission. PatientBond, a platform for automating patient engagement (emails, text messages, Interactive Voice Response), uses a proprietary psychographic segmentation model to customize messaging according to patients' motivations, attitudes and beliefs.

The readmission rate during this pilot study was 1.45 percent and overall response rate to psychographic messaging was 87.5 percent. It was determined that this platform is useful for engaging patients.