By Brittany Anderson
Sometimes, just knowing that others are thinking about you during difficult times can be healing.
In an effort to provide more spiritual and social connectedness, Baylor Scott & White (BS&W) launched a Community Support feature to the MyBSWHealth mobile app and online health portal on the BS&W website.
The idea for this new feature originated back in 2019, but the pandemic interrupted its progress. The feature was able to launch in January 2022 after around six months of work with developers.
Through the feature, users add a post anonymously — such as a prayer request or health struggle they’re facing — and receive responses from the MyBSWHealth community and BS&W chaplains, offering users of all faiths, or of none, the chance to connect with others for prayer, comfort and support.
Chaplains can anonymously respond to posts with spiritual care, and other MyBSWHealth users are able to engage with each other’s posts. Posts are able to be updated to keep the community informed of any changes or updates to their situation.
Mike Mullender, Vice President of Mission and Ministry at BS&W, said that there is a group of about 40 chaplains that are trained specifically for taking on this tech-centric role, and although they are still serving in other hospitals and roles around the BS&W system, they dedicate time to this initiative.
“Part of a pastoral role is for people to feel like a pastor or chaplain can be a confidant, so this is a way for technology to let that happen in a really different way that we haven’t before,” Mullender said, adding that the pandemic accelerated the need to connect to people in other ways, and that this feature has done just that.
“There have been phone calls and other virtual-type visits, but this is the first one I know of that has more of a chat type feature where people can come in and leave at their own convenience for support,” Mullender said.
According to Jacob Scott, BS&W’s Director of Digital Health, 15,000 to 20,000 users on average interact with the feature in some capacity each month for at least five minutes. Since the feature’s launch, there have been about 2,000 posts made. And, the feature’s success and growth has all been thanks to organic traffic.
Scott said that being able to “break down the walls of the hospital” and extend its services to the community in such a way is powerful, showing the community that support from chaplains and others does not have to be exclusively for those who have had major surgeries, are in critical care or experienced some sort of trauma.
“We try to focus on creating the best in class experiences … We think outside of the box of what we can offer BS&W users that others are not,” Scott said.
The feature has also opened up the opportunity for chaplains to refer users to crisis hotlines or make other health recommendations, helping those who may not know where or whom to reach out to, while enlarging the system’s ministry.
“It has been a really pleasantly surprising thing for us,” Mullender said. “It was very meaningful to me to see what other people were sharing and see other people praying for others. In the world today, most features are putting people in opposition to each other or in conflict, so this is a place where we see people at their best.”
More information on the feature, which is available through the MyBSWHealth app or website to users who are both patients and nonpatients, can be found at www.bswhealth.com/patient-tools/patient-portal.
