E-cards get special delivery

In an era when health care has gone digital for everything from medical records to free support websites such as CaringBridge.org, two local hospitals have added new Internet services to bring smiles to patients' faces.

At Fairview Ridges Hospital in Burnsville, volunteers deliver e-cards to patients through a service started in December that allows family and friends to send patients messages using the hospital's website. St. Francis Regional Medical Center in Shakopee launched a new web feature this month that gives loved ones a peek at newborn babies, even before Mom and Dad get home to upload photos.

"With short hospital stays, and certainly with people's families living anywhere in the world," Fairview Ridges volunteers thought e-cards would be a way that someone could send a message the same day it's delivered, said Judith McManus, director of volunteer services.

At St. Francis, new parents give hospital staff permission to post portrait-quality photographs of their babies on a website that out-of-town friends can access by calling for a password. The pictures include some information about the baby, and viewers may buy prints.

The ideas aren't revolutionary -- many hospitals offer similar services, and the Burnsville hospital borrowed its concept from The University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, McManus said. St. Francis started deliveries of its equivalent, "cheer cards," about three years ago, said hospital spokesperson Karen Cook.

Volunteers print out the messages on colored paper or card stock and deliver them to patients' rooms, often the same day.

Commercial greeting cards used to be the standard in post-op, but McManus said that she sees fewer stamped get-well cards these days than when she started working with health care volunteers 25 years ago. "But now, maybe by the time the card is received, the person has gone home," she said. "Hospital stays are short."

Sarah Lemagie • 952-882-9016