Patient-Centered Multispecialty Group Leverages CRM to Humanize Healthcare

// By Jane Weber Brubaker //

Griffin Health is all about person-centered care, and that extends to the way it communicates with patients.

When you put a stake in the ground in a big and high-profile way, everything you do is a reflection of what you say about yourself. Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut is the flagship hospital of the Planetree network. Planetree is a consumer healthcare organization dedicated to humanizing healthcare. In recognition of Griffin Health’s commitment to person-centered care, Planetree awarded Griffin Hospital Gold certification, and Griffin Faculty Physicians, the health system’s multispecialty medical group, Bronze certification.

Lara Yahav, director of surgical services at Griffin Faculty Physicians

Griffin Faculty Physicians offers primary care as well as medical services in 16 specialties including six surgical services. Lara Yahav is director of surgical services for the group. “I have two ultimate goals,” she says. “One is to improve the way healthcare is delivered in America — and I’ll start here in Derby — and the other is to grow the practices.”

Planetree’s person-centered principles emphasize creating a calming, healing environment, and that includes the way health systems communicate with patients. Shortly after Yahav joined the organization three years ago, she discovered that the medical group was using Actium’s CRM platform to deliver a primary care-focused newsletter to patients.

She saw the opportunity to include information about specialists and surgeons and inject calm into a fraught situation. “When it gets arced up from primary care to a specialist, a lot of times people panic and start to think something is really wrong,” she says.

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