Emory Healthcare has launched CarePages, a free Web-based service for patients to help them stay connected and easily communicate with friends and family during a hospital stay or through a lengthy medical experience.

CarePages are private and personalized Web pages that are available to Emory patients and families, helping them to stay in touch before, during and after a hospital stay, or any time care is needed. The service provides users with control over communication, while also allowing friends and loved ones to respond with messages of support.

According to Emory Healthcare Chief Nursing Officer Susan Grant, Emory partnered with CarePages as part of the organization's commitment to patient and family-centered care.

"We believe strongly at Emory that a patient's connectivity with his or her family and friends is a vital component to improving and quickening healthy outcomes," says Grant.

"Implementing CarePages to help our patients and families stay in touch was an easy decision for us to make, and we have already received positive feedback on how this service is helping to keep our patients and those who care for them both informed and inspired," explains Grant.

Emory is one of the first medical centers in Atlanta and in Georgia to offer CarePages. The service can include patient updates, photo galleries and message boards where visitors to the site can post comments or messages of support.

Patients can access CarePages through a direct link on the Emory Healthcare homepage. Each CarePage of an Emory patient will also feature the corporate logo and a "CareCompliment" section, which gives patients a chance to recognize hospital staff for exemplary care.

Heart transplant patient Joe Persichetti received his transplant at Emory University Hospital in 2004, and now volunteers with the Georgia Transplant Foundation. He visits transplant patients on the waiting list and talking to schools, women's groups, hospitals, YMCAs and other organizations about organ donation, transplantation and what receiving a new heart has meant to him.

He says that throughout his experience, from the time he suffered his first of three heart attacks, to receiving a new heart, he noticed there was little information available in print or on the web from people who had been through heart transplantation, both for the patient and the patient's family.

He is now setting up his own CarePages site to share his experience with others. Through CarePages, EHC patients or their family members can set up a personal Web site to track a patient's progress, or, in Joe's case, give insight into what to expect pre- and post-transplant for patient's on the transplant list.

"I want to be able to help people who are waiting for a transplant and those who are post-transplant," says Persichetti. "Those who are waiting, I hope they can get some help, and some hope, from my CarePage. Talking to someone who had been through it -- those conversations are the most uplifting part when you are waiting."

For more information on CarePages at Emory, please visit: http://www.carepages.com/emoryhealthcare.

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