data limitations of patient portal to patient computer or mobile device

by Fabian Klein 9 min read

Are Mobile Patient Portals the Next Step in Patient ...

31 hours ago Oct 31, 2016 · October 31, 2016 - Patient portals are often viewed as critical tools to improve patient engagement, but not every consumer is able to access their health data from a home computer. According to some healthcare professionals, offering a mobile patient portal is the critical next step for expanding access to personal health information and raising the level of … >> Go To The Portal


How are providers using patient data access to drive patient adoption?

Oct 31, 2016 · October 31, 2016 - Patient portals are often viewed as critical tools to improve patient engagement, but not every consumer is able to access their health data from a home computer. According to some healthcare professionals, offering a mobile patient portal is the critical next step for expanding access to personal health information and raising the level of …

Does broad patient health data access improve patient engagement?

2. Emergence of patient-facing health IT. According to Pew Research, 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they track at least one health indicator. 7 Although the number of patients interested in accessing their test results and tracking their health parameters has increased, patient portal use nationally is variable. 5,8 For example, Athenahealth reports a 25% adoption rate across 1100 fee-for …

Do patients have the right to see their own health data?

Aug 10, 2017 · August 10, 2017 - Patient health data access is a generally accepted patient engagement strategy that helps to empower patients through improved health literacy and integration into the care team.. Healthcare providers are acting on patient data access, with nearly 90 percent offering their patients access through a patient portal or digital health record.

Are patient portals and electronic personal health records better for older adults?

May 23, 2017 · The system must use strong passwords and should include the latest encryption and other protections. Otherwise, patient data could be compromised, leading to fraud and identity theft. A portal can be tough for some patients to comprehend, especially if they have been used to doing things the old-fashioned way.

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What are the disadvantages of using a patient portal?

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.Nov 11, 2021

What are the challenges of using electronic health records and patient portals?

7 challenges outlinedData entry. A clinician's work process may make it hard or impossible to appropriately enter the desired EHR data. ... Alerting. ... Interoperability. ... Visual display. ... Availability of information. ... System automation and defaults. ... Workflow support.Sep 17, 2018

What are the benefits disadvantages and problems that can occur from using a patient portal?

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.Feb 17, 2016

Can you think of any potential disadvantages of patients using the patient portal system within the EHR justify your answer?

One con to keep in mind with patient portals is that some patients may not have much experience with computers, preventing them from getting the most out of it. Another drawback is the potential for data breaches, so you'll need to work with a vendor that provides robust, secure EHR software.May 23, 2017

What are some of the barriers to having the electronic health record provide data in support of public health data collection and reporting?

36 With respect to data exchange with EHRs, significant barriers include the following: the inconsistent use of available data and messaging standards, which may require ongoing encouragement of public health's clinical partners; the establishment and ongoing monitoring of interfaces between clinical and public health; ...Oct 28, 2013

What are the challenges of storing and communicating patient medical records?

The challenges of storing health information records are varied but ubiquitous.Unsolicited Data. EHR is advantageous in many ways. ... Logistical Problems. ... Physical Problems. ... Ethical Problems. ... Accessibility.Jun 10, 2016

What are the benefits and challenges of using patient portals?

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...•Jul 15, 2019

Why do some patients fail to participate in the use of the patient portal?

The reason why most patients do not want to use their patient portal is because they see no value in it, they are just not interested. The portals do not properly incentivize the patient either intellectually (providing enough data to prove useful) or financially.

What are the advantages of patient portals to the patient and to the healthcare facility 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 three disadvantages of electronic health records?

EHR DisadvantagesOutdated data. EHRs can get incorrect information if the EHR is not updated immediately when new information, such as when new test results come in. ... It takes time and costs money. Selecting and setting up an EHR system and digitizing all paper records can take years. ... Inconsistency and inefficiency.Nov 20, 2020

What are the disadvantages of electronic medical records?

Disadvantages of Electronic Medical Records Storing sensitive patient data in the cloud—as many EMRs do—puts the data at risk of being hacked without sufficient layers of security. If a technical error occurs and your remote EMR software does not have the information backed up, all data may be lost.Oct 1, 2020

Are there any disadvantages to the electronic system?

Disadvantage: Security Filing records electronically may not be as secured as sending them via mail or post. Especially for those who employ an outside or third party service to do the electronic filing for them, you are providing identifiable information that the service may keep on file for a long period of time.

What is patient health data access?

August 10, 2017 - Patient health data access is a generally accepted patient engagement strategy that helps to empower patients through improved health literacy and integration into the care team.

Why is patient portal important?

Improving patient satisfaction and the patient experience is a key imperative in healthcare, and patient portals and data access can help drive that goal . Healthcare providers should consider their patients’ preferences for accessing their medical information when forming opinions about open data access.

Why is access to medical records important?

Patient access to health data and medical records is an important tactic for patient safety. Patients who view their medical records can serve as a second set of eyes to ensure that medical histories and other information are accurate. For example, patients can review medication notes and flag a dosage error.

Why do doctors use notes?

Doctors may use their notes as an opportunity to make an observation about non-compliance, which may not be received positive ly by patients later reviewing the notes.

Do patients report strain on the patient-provider relationship?

To many providers’ credit, patients do sometimes report a strain on the patient-provider relationship due to data and clinical note access, the JAMA article reported. However, many patients also appreciate their providers’ frankness and view it as a form of patient motivation.

Why are patient portals important?

A major pro of patient portals is that they improve patient engagement. Engaged patients are more likely to stay loyal to a practice as compared to other organizations that don’t make much of an effort to connect.

What is an EHR in medical practice?

An EHR is a database of all the records for your patients. It’s much more efficient than an antiquated, paper-based method for organizing charts in your practice.

Can a portal be used to do things the old fashioned way?

Otherwise, patient data could be compromised, leading to fraud and identity theft. A portal can be tough for some patients to comprehend, especially if they have been used to doing things the old-fashioned way. However, you can educate and acclimate patients to the portal when you explain the benefits to them.

Can you educate patients on portals?

However, you can educate and acclimate patients to the portal when you explain the benefits to them. There is also the issue of patients being exposed to more medical jargon then they are used to, including acronyms and strange Latin terms for body parts.

Can portals be simplified?

But portals interfaces can be easily simplified and a simple training brochure or online video could make a big difference in getting more patients used to the idea of using the system. It’s natural to have a number of questions about installing an EHR and activating a patient portal for your practice.

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.”

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 data can be recorded on a mobile app?

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.

What is the use of health information technology?

Widespread use of health information technology (IT) could potentially increase patients’ access to their health information and facilitate future goals of advancing patient-centered care. Despite having increased access to their health data, patients do not always understand this information or its implications, ...

Who wrote Patient Portals and Health Apps: Pitfalls, Promises, and What One Might Learn from the

This statement accompanies the article Patient portals and health apps: Pitfalls, promises, and what one might learn from the other authored by Jessica L. Baldwin and co-authored by Hardeep Singh, Dean F. Sittig, Traber Davis Giardina and submitted to Healthcare as an Article Type. Authors collectively affirm that this manuscript represents original work that has not been published and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.We also affirm that all authors listed contributed significantly to the project and manuscript. Furthermore we confirm that none of our authors have disclosures and we declare noconflict of interest.

What is the HealthKit app?

In June 2014, Apple announced the HealthKit cloud application programming interface (API) and its partnership with Epic (Verona, WI), an electronic health record vendor who also makes MyChart (a popular patient portal), and the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN).

What are the pros and cons of a patient portal?

Pro: Better communication with chronically ill patients. One of the clearest benefits to a patient portal is the added ability for communication between patients and providers, and these benefits are felt strongest with regard to chronically ill patients. With the secure messaging functions on patient portals, chronically ill patients are able ...

What is portal email?

The portal is just a secure e-mail system that we can use to communicate. You can send me a message and it goes right into your chart, so I have all of your information at hand when I read it and respond. If you use it and don’t like it, you don’t have to continue to use it. Just let us know.

Why are reminders important?

Reminders from providers, and the capability for patients to discuss issues with their physicians, help increase patient engagement and therefore play a role in boosting the patient’s overall health.

Is a patient portal good?

Although this can be viewed as a good thing because patients do have the right to see their own health data, it also opens doors for security concerns. A patient portal may be just one more place for a potential hacker or healthcare data thief to access a patient’s data, leaving that patient liable to identity theft.

What percentage of portal users use mobile devices?

Of these portal users, 62% used desktops/laptops only, 6% used mobile devices only, and 32% used both desktops/laptops and mobile devices. Black, Hispanic, and Asian enrollees had significantly lower odds of portal use than whites. Black and Hispanic portal users also were significantly more likely to use mobile devices only (relative risk ratio, ...

How does mobile technology help healthcare?

Mobile devices are playing a large role in healthcare, from providing on-demand health information to helping patients and providers monitor and manage chronic conditions. However, researchers and healthcare organizations need to ensure that our increasing reliance on mobile technology does not exacerbate disparities in care and access among vulnerable populations. 27 In addition to reconfirming racial/ethnic differences in online patient portal use, we found black and Hispanic portal users to be more likely to use mobile devices to access the patient portal. Mobile devices present an opportunity for healthcare organizations to increase their patient engagement among black and Hispanic enrollees. The accessibility and functionality of patient portals through mobile applications and mobile browsers may help reduce differences in patient portal use. Author Affiliations: RTI International (EC), Waltham, MA; Medical Directorate, University Hospitals of Geneva (KB), Geneva, Switzerland; UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine and Center for Vulnerable Populations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (CRL), San Francisco, CA; Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (LJ, JDR), Seattle, WA.

What percentage of group health enrollees are white?

Among 318,700 Group Health enrollees, 68% were white; 4%, black; 8%, Asian; and 5%, Hispanic ( Table 1 ). Enrollees varied significantly across demographic characteristics. Twenty-six percent of white enrollees were 65 years or older compared with 11% to 14% of racial/ethnic minority enrollees. Asians and Hispanics had significantly higher proportions of enrollees with a primary language other than English (17% and 7%, respectively). Blacks had the lowest proportion living in high educational attainment areas (89%) and the highest proportion in the lowest median household income areas (43%). Mean months of enrollment during the study period did not vary by race/ethnicity (data not shown).

Do white people use the portal?

Although overall portal use was high among all enrollees, racial/ethnic minority enrollees remained less likely to use the portal compared with white enrollees. Almost two-thirds of white enrollees used the portal, yet approximately half or less of racial/ethnic minority enrollees used the portal. Our study is one of the first to examine variations ...

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