Ethnographic Discovery of Adverse Events in Patient Online Discussions: Customer Relationship Management

A healthcare provider can extend its customer relationship management program by sponsoring an online, patient discussion group. In those groups, patients may discuss adverse events that are inadequately addressed in the literature. The author, as a cancer patient, joined two online, patient discussion groups and identified four types of such adverse events. For each such adverse event, the patient findings, the medical literature, and the implications are noted. Extracts from the literature that were provided to the patients were welcomed by the patients. A literature review of one of the adverse events has been published in a medical journal. Factors are presented for healthcare providers to consider in deciding whether or not to sponsor an online, patient discussion group. IntroductIon Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are used in healthcare systems around the world (Alshawi, Missi, & Eldabi, 2003; Calhoun, Raisinghani, Tan, Untama, Weiershaus, & Levermann, 2005; Banaszak-Hol, & Hearld, 2006). A typical approach to CRM is to survey patient satisfaction and to address management steps to improve the results of the next survey (Zineldin, 2006). Data mining of Web information is an alternative way to learn what consumers think. In the financial sector, consumer views on particular investments have been assessed through the comments that those consumers make in online, discussion groups (Antweiler & Frank, 2004). Many online patient groups are established by volunteers on free sites, such as groups.yahoo.