TRICARE Helps To ‘eCareConnect’ With New Families

TRICARE Helps To ‘eCareConnect’ With New Families

FALLS CHURCH, Va. – Since September 2006, TRICARE has funded eCareConnect, a service that helps DoD hospitals communicate more effectively with expectant parents and new families, providing important research-based health information customized to their stage of parenthood. Since then, more than 20,000 beneficiaries have benefited from this e-mail-based communication service at 18 Army and Navy hospitals. 
         
Military Hospitals with more than 500 births annually will be able to customize the newsletter for their patients. The standard weekly e-mail newsletter is available to everyone and is provided free for all new and expectant parent patients in the military by TRICARE.

“Patients have come to rely on the trusted content, and find that the family-friendly service helps loved ones who are deployed feel like they are included during the child-birth experience,” said COL Peter Nielsen, OB/GYN Consultant to The Surgeon General and Residency Program Director at Madigan Army Medical Center.

Valuable information, such as TRICARE’s updated dental coverage for pregnant women, was sent to subscribers between weeks 10 and 21 of their pregnancies. This communication update is one example of timely information that can be easily disseminated through an electronic communication system like eCareConnect.

“It is an opportunity to give a massive amount of excellent education to our patients, who tend to be young and far away from family support. This is a highly professional service that is standardized. It will give our patients confidence in our services and in our processes to be associated with something so professional and techy,” said COL Richard Jackson, Chief of OB/GYN Department Head, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

The Parent Review, the company that produces eCareConnect, recently performed a survey of the weekly e-mail readership within the DoD. The survey asked if the weekly e-mail was regularly read by the user’s spouse, partner, other friend or family member. The results:

    * 29.44 percent open rate
    * 30.55 percent response rate from those that opened the e-mail.
    * Of these responders, 67% said that one or more of their spouses, partner, other friend or family had read the weekly email.

DoD now has more than 20,980 active subscribers to the weekly e-mails, however the e-mails may be reaching closer to 35,036 beneficiaries, according to the survey.  A military mom from Naval Medical Center Portsmouth stated, “Being a new parent is scary and your little bits of advice really make a difference and set my mind at ease. Thank you for all you do!”

TRICARE encourages pregnant beneficiaries to subscribe to this service and take advantage of the valuable information included in the weekly e-mails. To hear more about eCareConnect listen to the Military Health System weekly radio show “Dot-Mil-Docs,” on Blog TalkRadio, Episode 25-MHS Support for New Families at  http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stations/PentagonRadioNetwork/Dot-Mil-Docs/2008/10/16/Episode-24-MHS-Support-for-New-Parents. Sign up for eCareConnect at www.theparentreview.com/DoD.