athenahealth, Demandforce accelerate the power of social media engagement in healthcare

September 11, 2013 — athenahealth Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination, announced the general availability of Demandforce automated marketing, communication, and reputation building software as part of the athenahealth Marketplace.

The Marketplace is a one-stop shop for healthcare providers to browse and select healthcare IT (HIT) solutions that augment and complement athenahealth’s suite of cloud-based services. Providers currently using athenaCommunicator, athenahealth’s Best in KLAS cloud-based patient communications service, will gain access to Demandforce’s suite of online marketing tools, empowering them to better engage patients and their families.

Tens of thousands of small businesses across more than 50 industries including dental, automotive, and beauty salons currently use Demandforce tools to augment marketing and customer communications. The unique capabilities of Demandforce can be used by doctors at all sized practices to attract new patients, manage online reputation, and measure the impact of marketing and social media efforts on business results. Combined with athenaCommunicator, which serves as a provider’s core patient engagement and communications platform, Demandforce will enable providers to better manage the reputation of their practice online, using social media content, patient reviews, email marketing promotions, and more.

“Social media has clearly arrived and is not going away. The fact is that our patients are on these platforms with or without us and there’s incredible value in being able to connect with them online,” said Anthony Cerullo, Founders Family Medicine and Urgent Care. “Navigating the waters of patient engagement is challenging in traditional settings, let alone the world of social platforms. With the combination of athenahealth and Demandforce, we’re confident we can tap into the power of an exciting, but complex channel to grow awareness and help business. Initially, we focused on establishing a clear line of communication with our patients via athenaCommunicator, but as an extension to these efforts Demandforce allowed us to grow our online presence on social media and review sites. In just the first two months, Demandforce helped us collect over 40 patient reviews that are published across the web for potential patients to read.”

All live solutions featured within the athenahealth Marketplace have been pilot-tested across care environments, as part of the athenahealth workflow, and by More Disruption Please (MDP). MDP is athenahealth’s business development program aimed at launching a massive surge of disruptive innovation in health care. The MDP advantage is that qualified innovators can gain access to athenahealth’s growing cloud-based network of providers. Through the MDP program, athenahealth will continue to introduce new services and accelerate the introduction of high-value innovation via the cloud.

Kyle Armbrester, vice president, business development and MDP lead, said: “We are excited to join forces with Demandforce and introduce the power of social marketing and engagement to the athenahealth provider network, and as part of our patient portal. There’s tremendous value for providers to be able to engage patients not only in better ways but also in new places. We believe the power of online marketing is sorely overdo in fully coming to health care. It’s being used in really smart ways in pockets and we’re doing our part to expand the impact it can have on advancing not only patient engagement, but the delivery of care.”

Aimeé LaFont Leifer, head of Demandforce’s Health Division, added: “Working with athenahealth means being able to expand our audience in the healthcare sector and support practices in their marketing efforts. Our company’s mission is to help small businesses grow. We enable them to thrive in today’s online world by delivering the best marketing practices and automated tools to create and maintain a strong online presence on sites including Google, Citysearch, Facebook, and Twitter. In healthcare, it’s clear that providers need additional support not only in attracting the online patient, but also in strengthening their connection with current patients via social media. Given the positive results we’ve seen with the beta testers, as part of the MDP pilot, we are thrilled to be announcing the general availability of Demandforce to more physicians.”

Source: athenahealth