benefits of patient portal scholarly articles

Very few studies associated use of the patient portal, or its features, to improved outcomes; 37% (10/27) of papers reported improvements in medication adherence, disease awareness, self-management of disease, a decrease of office visits, an increase in preventative medicine, and an increase in extended office visits, at the patient's request for additional information.

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How to get your patients to use your patient portal?

 · A main advantage of the patient portal is that the data are current, while the data in the PHR are current only when the patient updates it. Without a patient portal as an intermediary, the patient would not be able to access the data in the electronic health record (EHR).

How do you benefit from your patient portal?

 · With secure e-mail messaging through patient portals, patients can quickly report adverse effects or dose adjustments, which may be beneficial when the physician’s office is closed. For example, a patient receiving capecitabine (Xeloda—Genentech) for treatment of metastatic breast cancer may experience hand and foot syndrome, a common adverse effect.

How to achieve patient engagement with a patient portal?

While the evidence is currently immature, patient portals have demonstrated benefit by enabling the discovery of medical errors, improving adherence to medications, and providing patient-provider communication, etc. High-quality studies are needed to fully understand, improve, and evaluate their imp …

What are the disadvantages of patient portal?

 · Patient portal benefits include patients’ ability to access their clinical summaries online. Providers can also send lab results to patients via secure messaging accompanied by a brief message explaining the results (for example, “Your results are normal”) and any needed follow‐up instructions (for example, “Come back in 3 months for a recheck”).

What are the benefits of a patient portal?

What are the benefits of patient portals?Patient portals are efficient. ... Patient portals improve communication. ... They store health information in one place. ... Patient portals satisfy meaningful use standards. ... They improve data accuracy. ... Patient portals make refilling prescriptions easy. ... They're available whenever you need them.More items...•

Why is patient portal important in healthcare?

Engaging patients in the delivery of health care has the potential to improve health outcomes and patient satisfaction. Patient portals may enhance patient engagement by enabling patients to access their electronic medical records (EMRs) and facilitating secure patient-provider communication.

What are the benefits and challenges of using patient portals?

What are the Top Pros and Cons of Adopting Patient Portals?Pro: Better communication with chronically ill patients.Con: Healthcare data security concerns.Pro: More complete and accurate patient information.Con: Difficult patient buy-in.Pro: Increased patient ownership of their own care.

What are the advantages of patient portals to the patient and to the healthcare facility?

Patient portals make tasks such as requesting prescription refills and referrals easier and more convenient leads to greater patient compliance – and when patients follow doctors' orders, clinical outcomes improve.

How do patient portals improve patient outcomes?

Most of the portal interventions used tailored alerts or educational resources tailored to the patient's condition. Patient portal interventions lead to improvements in a wide range of psychobehavioral outcomes, such as health knowledge, self-efficacy, decision making, medication adherence, and preventive service use.

Which of the following is a benefit of patient portals quizlet?

The patient portal supports two-way communication, which allows the patient to work with physicians between patient visits, request appointments, and receive reminders. These reminders can be for appointments, need for follow-up, and more.

What are the cons of patient portals?

Even though they should improve communication, there are also disadvantages to patient portals....Table of ContentsGetting Patients to Opt-In.Security Concerns.User Confusion.Alienation and Health Disparities.Extra Work for the Provider.Conclusion.

Why do people not use patient portals?

About seven in 10 individuals cited their preference to speak with their health care provider directly as a reason for not using their patient portal within the past year. About one-quarter of individuals who did not view their patient portal within the past year reported concerns about privacy and security..

How safe are patient portals?

Patient portals have privacy and security safeguards in place to protect your health information. To make sure that your private health information is safe from unauthorized access, patient portals are hosted on a secure connection and accessed via an encrypted, password-protected logon.

How do patient portals contribute to patient centered care?

Further, portals help providers educate their patients and prepare them for future care encounters. When patients have access to their health data, they are better informed, and have the potential to generate deep and meaningful conversations regarding patient wellness during doctor's appointments.

Why are patient portals important?

While the evidence is currently immature, patient portals have demonstrated benefit by enabling the discovery of medical errors, improving adherence to medications, and providing patient-provider communication, etc. High-quality studies are needed to fully understand, improve, and evaluate their impact.

How does a patient portal improve patient engagement?

Patient portals may enhance patient engagement by enabling patients to access their electronic medical records (EMRs) and facilitating secure patient-provider communication.

What are the inputs and outputs of a patient portal?

The inputs are the material (eg, hardware and software) and nonmaterial (eg, leadership) components that facilitate or impair the establishment or use of the portal. Processes include the interactions of the users with the portal. Outputs comprise the results of the implementation or the use of the portal. Through the analysis, we identified 14 themes within these three categories, shown in Textbox 1.

How does patient involvement improve quality of care?

Promoting patient involvement in health care delivery may lead to improved quality and safety of care [14,15] by enabling patients to spot and report errors in EMRs, for example [6]. Some patients recognize the role of patient portals in their health care, reporting satisfaction with the ability to communicate with their health care teams and perform tasks such as requesting prescription refills conveniently [3,16]. Portal use may reduce in-person visits, visits to emergency departments, and patient-provider telephone conversations [3,8-10,12,16]. Despite the potential of portals, already used in the ambulatory setting for some time, implementation in the inpatient setting has only recently gathered momentum [17-19]. The inpatient setting presents additional challenges for implementing patient portals [18,20]. Clinical conditions leading to hospitalization are often acute and the amount of medical information generated during this time can be extensive, which may overwhelm patients [20] and challenge information technology to rapidly display this information.

How does EMR help patients?

Hospitals and other health care organizations can facilitate patient access to their EMR information through patient portals. Patient portals can provide secure, online access to personal health information [1] such as medication lists, laboratory results, immunizations, allergies, and discharge information [2]. They can also enable patient-provider communication using secure messaging, appointments and payment management, and prescription refill requests [2,3].

What are barriers in portals?

Barriers: factors that hinder widespread adoption or portal use

What is portal design?

Portal design: umbrella term for all design-related aspects of the portal including portal interface, content, features, and functions

How does mHealth affect pharmacy?

mHealth could affect specialty pharmacies in several ways. Specialty pharmacies manage patients with rare and chronic diseases that require high-cost and complex medications; thus, it is important to have adequate clinical support. Some patient portals and apps include adherence notifications, adverse effect mitigation strategies, and clinical management of disease and therapy. With secure e-mail messaging through patient portals, patients can quickly report adverse effects or dose adjustments, which may be beneficial when the physician’s office is closed.

Why is mHealth important in pharmacy?

As patient portals and mHealth apps evolve , incorporation of technology in specialty pharmacies presents an excellent opportunity for improving patient care. Ultimately, mHealth technology allows patients to play a role in managing their health and is another form of communication with providers that can lead to better patient outcomes.

What apps do patients use to re-adhere to their medication?

For instance, a patient who wants to increase medication adherence can use apps such as PatientPartner, Medisafe, Dosecast, MedHelper, My Pillbox, or MyMeds. While the variation in mHealth apps caters to patient preferences, the lack of standardization leads to drawbacks for providers. For example, many of these apps either track data differently or, in many cases, do not relay information back to the provider. Patients may record their missed doses through these apps—while refilling their medications on time. This may portray to providers that their patients adhere to their medication even when they do not. When patients cannot communicate in real time, providers can miss opportunities to identify nonadherence. Thus, there is heavy focus on designing portals and apps similar to MyMeds, which incorporates bidirectional communication between providers and patients.

What happens when patients cannot communicate in real time?

When patients cannot communicate in real time, providers can miss opportunities to identify nonadherence. Thus, there is heavy focus on designing portals and apps similar to MyMeds, which incorporates bidirectional communication between providers and patients.

What is mobile health?

Mobile health (mHealth) is a means of providing health services or information via portals or applications (apps) on wireless devices, such as smartphones or tablets. Patient portals are secure websites that help patients access their health information at their convenience. Many patient portals are mobile enabled via a web-based platform ...

Is a patient portal a form of mHealth?

Many patient portals are mobile enabled via a web-based platform and are therefore considered a form of mHealth. Patient-focused mHealth apps—software or programs stored directly on the mobile device—can provide an opportunity for patient-initiated health or disease management.

How do patient portals benefit the patient?

Conclusions: While the evidence is currently immature, patient portals have demonstrated benefit by enabling the discovery of medical errors, improving adherence to medications, and providing patient-provider communication, etc. High-quality studies are needed to fully understand, improve, and evaluate their impact.

How does a patient portal improve patient engagement?

Patient portals may enhance patient engagement by enabling patients to access their electronic medical records (EMRs) and facilitating secure patient-provider communication.

Why is it persuasive to use a portal?

They found that it is particularly persuasive when providers encourage patients to use the portal because patients trust providers and value their opinions. One provider says he reinforces a patient’s use of the portal by closing all messages with “Thanks for using the portal.”.

What are the challenges of the portal?

One major challenge with the portal is the multiple step registration process . Patients provide their e‐mail address at the front desk and are given a password to register from home. Some patients fail to complete the registration process after leaving the clinic. Remembering and managing passwords and managing family accounts are also challenging for patients. For example, a parent may log in for one child and then ask questions about a second child. For providers and staff, a challenge is that there is no way to know whether a Web‐enabled patient actually uses the portal and there are no read receipts to confirm that patients have read a message.

Why is PHMG monitoring?

Messaging is monitored periodically to ensure that communication with patients is succinct and user-friendly.

What is the PHMG strategy?

PHMG had a strategy of ensuring that patients hear about the portal from multiple sources during each clinical visit. To execute this strategy, PHMG used several methods of communication, including:

When did PHMG start patient portal?

PHMG launched the patient portal in early 2010. As a first step, the physician champion piloted the portal for about 6 months before it was implemented in one clinic at a time. According to the physician champion, implementation was “easier than expected because everyone was already comfortable with eClinicalWorks, ...

Why is Qualis important?

Qualis has also been an important resource for information about the meaningful use rules. "We felt strongly that from a quality standpoint we could not succeed without going to electronic health records. I felt very strongly we had to invest in it because it would positively affect every patient that we encounter.".

When did PHMG implement EHR?

In 2007 PHMG implemented an EHR system, eClinicalWorks, as part of a strategy to improve quality of care and facilitate coordination of care across its multiple clinic locations. In preparing for implementation, PHMG proceeded with:

How many patients use a patient portal?

surveys examining the adoption of patient portals indicate that only one-third of patients with access to a patient portal use it.

What is an EHR portal?

EHR ( electronic health record ), PHR ( personal health record) Patient portals are personal health record (PHR) systems tethered to a health organization’s electronic health record (EHR) system. They allow patients to track their medical history, access their medical records, and communicate with their health-care providers, and in some cases, ...

What is the value of a PHR?

PHRs have value to providers and patients in numerous health-care settings and scenarios; however, this review of the literature reveals that in the PHR and patient portal knowledge base accumulated to date, very few studies have addressed the use of PHRs for pulmonary conditions or by pulmonologists. As shown in the example presented herein, use of a patient portal is a significant form of communication between providers and patients, and pulmonologists use the portal differently than other physicians. The example studied provides important insights into how adoption of patient portals can be energized. Further studies are needed to explore opportunities and to elucidate changes in quality, safety, satisfaction, and financial outcomes related to the use of PHRs.

Who developed the smart portal for chronic disease management?

Haddad M, Chetty G. Development of a smart e-health portal for chronic disease management. Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing. 2012;7440:284-291.

Does physician dictation change when visit notes are made available online for patients?

No change in physician dictation patterns when visit notes are made available online for patients.

Do pulmonologists use the patient portal?

In contrast, pulmonologists addressed more patient problems through the patient portal than the group practice average. This is seen both for medical advice requests ( Fig 2 shows the patient portal screen for this feature) from patients (60% vs 51%) and responses from the pulmonologists and their teams (50% vs 40%). Overall, this case study demonstrates that pulmonologists and a significant number of their patients are using the patient portal, with more messages characterized as being related to health issues than to administrative tasks.

How does a patient portal help?

As a secure online website providing patients access to their health information, the portal aims to improve quality of care by engaging patients as active participants in their care. While portal functions vary, most allow patients to view laboratory test results, immunizations, medications, and allergies, as well as to send secure messages to their physician. 14 However, the portal can be difficult to navigate, and patients may struggle to understand their medical information. For instance, in our previous work we found that test result display and graphing were often confusing to patients, and they reported that portals were not user-friendly. 15 A recent systematic review of patient and provider attitudes toward patient portal use found that the most negatively-perceived feature was user-friendliness, making the portal difficult to navigate. 16 Our work exploring patient's experiences using the portal to view test results echoes this finding, as many patients reported having difficulty locating their test results in the portal. 17 When patients interact with their test results, they need to know the purpose of the test, the interpretation of the result, and next steps. 18 Addressing these issues may help improve patient-centered care.

What is a patient portal?

Patient portals are intended to engage patients by giving them access to medical information ; however, if patients are unable to understand the information or the system is not usable, patients will not take advantage of them. Despite several aforementioned drawbacks, apps have used evolving innovative designs to engage consumers and offer unique features and functions that could be translated to patient portal design. For instance, Apple's ResearchKit's Diabetes app pings the user daily to update disease and symptom-related information. Check-in questions or user-friendly alerts in portals could similarly be explored for engaging more patients their health care. Alerts could ask if the patient understands an abnormal result, direct them to helpful resources, and encourage test result follow-up. Finally, test results in the portal need to be easily understood by laypeople or displayed using simplified medical terms. For example, a portal might display elevated cholesterol as "↑LDL cholesterol," or even just display the number without a flag, whereas a health app may label it as “bad cholesterol.”

What are the benefits of using an app for patient portal?

Although apps might serve a different purpose, patient portals could adopt certain app features that lead to better engagement success with patients. Mobile apps have the capability to record several types of data, such as activity level, nutrition, and sleep, as well as data related to a consumer's condition or disease, such as diabetes or asthma. For instance, Apple's ResearchKit, although not designed as a health tracking application, offers several features that could be useful for health monitoring. It collects data and simultaneously encourages users to track their health by prompting daily health assessments. mHealth apps offer symptom management activities, which are not a standard feature universally available in patient portals.16 For example, LifeMap Solutions (San Jose, CA) has an application for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease management that provides medication reminders and tracks users’ symptoms to identify abrupt declines in their condition. Sentrian (Aliso Viejo, CA), a patient intelligence company, uses biosensors (i.e., blood glucose biosensor) to detect deteriorating health of patients to prevent avoidable hospitalizations.20 There are also apps that allow users to view their test results, such as Healthvana (Los Angeles, CA) and Labcorp (Research Triangle Park, NC). Healthvana, for instance, provides patients with interpretation of sexually transmitted infection results and follow-up instructions. 21

How can apps improve patient engagement?

To improve user experience with future portals, developers could look towards apps in design, function, and user interface. Combining certain high-yield features of mHealth apps with the wealth of provider-generated data available in portals may improve portal use, increase patient engagement, and empower patients to track their health and disease (s). Nevertheless, continued research is necessary to understand how best to combine these features and how data can be used meaningfully by patients to improve outcomes. For further progress, informatics and human factors researchers will need to work in coordination with mHealth vendors, health care delivery organizations, and their data to determine how patients are using these health IT tools and how to make them most useful for patient care. This type of evidence is essential for creating value for patients, clinicians, and health care organizations, as well as for initiating changes to improve the patient portal. Both these health IT tools should be subjected to rigorous evaluation to ensure they meet their potential in improving patient outcomes.

How can information technology improve patient care?

There is growing interest in electronic access to health information and the use of digital data for both disease and health-related tracking. Widespread use of health information technology (IT) could potential ly increase patients’ access to their health information and facilitate future goals of advancing patient-centered care.1 For example, health IT can be used to facilitate information exchange with clinicians and instruct patients when to act upon clinical issues, such as out of range physiologic parameters, follow-up of test results, and complications of medication use. 2 Tools such as personal health records, patient portals, and various mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) have been developed to help patients engage in their own care. Already, a significant number of patients use health IT; therefore, it is essential that patient-facing health IT be tailored to their needs. In this paper, we discuss two forms of patient-facing health IT tools—patient portals and apps—to highlight how, despite several limitations of each, combining high-yield features of mHealth apps with portals could increase patient engagement and self-management and be more effective than either of them alone. This could potentially improve both patient experience and outcomes related to patient-facing health IT.

What are some apps that track people's health?

Applications, such as Mango Health (San Francisco, CA), Fitbit (San Francisco, CA), and Apple (Cupertino, CA) iPhone 6's built in Health app, have consumer-friendly features with easy log-in access, real-time tracking, and simplified data display. 19 From a patient standpoint, these features likely make the applications more intuitive and easy-to-use than patient portals. Furthermore, mHealth apps live on mobile devices, which make them easily accessible with little effort to login after setting up the account. This ubiquitous access is one of the reasons mobile technology is rapidly replacing desktop technologies.

What is patient facing in health?

Patient-facing health IT should be simply designed to encourage and sustain use and engage patients at various levels of health literacy. 3 Patients increasingly express interest in being involved in medical decision-making and desire access to their health information.4 Despite having increased access to their health data, patients do not always understand this information or its implications, and digital health data can be difficult to navigate when displayed in a small-format, complex interface. For example, test results are not always displayed in a way that is easy for the patient to understand (e.g., with normal ranges clearly shown, along with implications of abnormal results). There is also little evidence that patient portal design addresses patients’ needs outside of meeting the “meaningful use” patient engagement criteria. 5 It is imperative to keep patients’ needs in mind because patient-facing health IT users in the long run will not be just the early adopter health and technology "enthusiasts," but regular people in need of better disease control and management. 6