New customization tools enhance patient education materials

The AAOS patient education Web site Your Orthopaedic Connection (YOC) is already a well-known, highly respected source of musculoskeletal information for your patients. Now, it can also be your source for customized patient education materials to use in your practice, enabling you to take patient education to the next level.

Recently, YOC introduced a new Web tool that allows you to customize these peer-reviewed patient education materials for your practice. Web site customization can give your practice patient education materials an authoritative edge and ensure that your patients receive the information you want them to have.

How customization works for you
Customized patient education materials from YOC can benefit you and your practice in the following four ways:

• It saves you time. The materials are already developed and new topics are added regularly.
• The information is up-to-date and peer-reviewed for accuracy. Your patients will get the information you want them to have, not misinformation they might find on their own.
• You can customize information to your patients’ individual needs, which helps them make informed decisions.
• You can save money by printing out content as needed, customized with your practice information.

With the customization tool, you can add links that go directly to AAOS articles from your own Web site. Patients who visit your practice Web site can easily link to the AAOS articles you recommend. And because the YOC site was recently redesigned and updated, the materials follow a consistent format and include current information.

Beyond the linking capability, you can use the customization tool to brand information for your patients with both the AAOS brand and your practice identity, including contact information.

Customization also offers you the ability to create tailor-made patient education checklists. This feature enables you to select, categorize, and list articles that would be useful for a patient. If your patient is scheduled for joint replacement surgery, for example, one group of relevant articles might be titled “Preparing for Your Surgery.” A second checklist might cover postoperative concerns, including therapeutic exercises.

Try it…you’ll like it
AAOS members who have tested the customization tools like the ease of use and the substantial cost-saving opportunity they present. As one member said, “The information included at YOC is better than the hodge-podge of patient information I currently use. This material is of very high quality and will save me over $150 per week in time saved discussing the content.”

“This tool helps to standardize the information we provide patients and allows more understanding of general standards of care,” said another early user, noting that it was a good alternative to skewed Web information a patient might otherwise explore.

AAOS is offering the new YOC customization tool at a special introductory price of $50 for one year—but this special price is only good until April 1, 2008.

For more information, visit http://orthoinfo.aaos.org