external measurements of patient portal

What are the features of a patient portal?

Feb 25, 2021 · There were 32 different combinations of study metrics, identified in Table 3, with the two most common metric combinations being patient use/adoption, frequency, and intensity (n=9) and patient use/adoption alone (n=9). The majority of studies (53/87, 61%) analyzed three or fewer metrics, with 3.11 as the average number of metrics reported.

How should we measure Portal usage?

Jun 12, 2008 · and overall uptake (i.e., portal usage) by patients. Many of the studies and reports looked at frequency of use of patient portal features. This measure is important in improving the usability of portals through user feedback, and also it can be linked with clinical data to document longer-term changes in patient behavior, clinical outcomes ...

What is the portal for patient engagement?

Jan 01, 2016 · The potential of patient portals to improve patient engagement and health outcomes has been discussed for more than a decade. The slow growth in patient portal adoption rates among patients and providers in the United States, despite external incentives, indicates that this is a complex issue. We examined evidence of patient portal use and effects …

Which patient portal metrics are most commonly studied?

during the same EHR reporting period, all of the providers can count the patient to meet the measure if the patient accesses any of the information in the portal or PHR. In other words, a patient does not need to access the specific information an eligible professional or eligible hospital contributed, in order for each

How is patient portal success measured?

To be successful, they should be assessed using measures that span across improvements in patient and family engagement (e.g., overall use and satisfaction with use and care), clinical outcomes, and operational efficiency.

How do you measure patient access to care?

There are six key patient access metrics healthcare leaders need to assess their current status and drive successful access initiatives.Provider Network Composition. ... Provider Capacity Utilization. ... Patient Demand Conversion. ... New Patient Growth. ... Appointment Wait Times. ... Referral Retention.Sep 21, 2018

What are the features of a patient portal?

A robust patient portal should include the following features:Clinical summaries.Secure (HIPAA-compliant) messaging.Online bill pay.New patient registration.Ability to update demographic information.Prescription renewals and contact lens ordering.Appointment requests.Appointment reminders.More items...

What types of patient portals are there?

There are two main types of patient portals: a standalone system and an integrated service. Integrated patient portal software functionality usually comes as a part of an EMR system, an EHR system or practice management software. But at their most basic, they're simply web-based tools.Feb 12, 2021

What is a KPI in patient access?

Develop and Monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Patient Access. To ensure a high level of productivity and accuracy, Patient Access operations should be measured on KPIs to monitor quality, process, financial, and customer service.

Which are the 4 components of a healthcare system?

In this model, adapted from Ferlie and Shortell (2001), the health care system is divided into four “nested” levels: (1) the individual patient; (2) the care team, which includes professional care providers (e.g., clinicians, pharmacists, and others), the patient, and family members; (3) the organization (e.g., ...

What are the duties of a portal in hospital?

The United States government defines a patient portal as “a secure online website that gives patients convenient 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an Internet connection.”2 The data within a portal is typically managed by a healthcare institution and allows patients to have access to ...Feb 10, 2017

What is the advantage of a patient portal for the patient?

The Benefits of a Patient Portal You can access all of your personal health information from all of your providers in one place. If you have a team of providers, or see specialists regularly, they can all post results and reminders in a portal. Providers can see what other treatments and advice you are getting.Aug 13, 2020

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.Feb 17, 2016

How do you implement a patient portal?

7 Steps to Implement a New Patient Portal SolutionResearch different solutions. ... Look for the right features. ... Get buy-in from key stakeholders. ... Evaluate and enhance existing workflows. ... Develop an onboarding plan. ... Successful go-live. ... Seek out painless portal migration.Jul 2, 2020

How common are patient portals?

A subsequent Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) data brief, based on the HINTS survey, reported that as of 2018, 52% of patients had patient portal access. Only around 28% had accessed the portal within the last year.Dec 2, 2019

What makes the patient portal different from a PHR?

The Portal is controlled by the source system (EMR/EHR/Hospital). On the other hand, the Personal Health Record (PHR) is more patient centric, is controlled by a patient or family member, and may or may not be connected to a doctor or hospital (i.e. it may be tethered or untethered).Sep 6, 2012

Key Words

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, they record patient-entered data.

Materials and Methods

Figure 1 illustrates the literature review strategy.

Use of a Patient Portal by Pulmonologists in a Group Practice

We looked at the use of a patient portal implemented in early 2009 in a multispecialty group practice in the northeastern United States. As of May 31, 2014, 51,770 active patients in this practice had activated their access to the patient portal.

Conclusions

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.

Can a provider withhold information from a patient's website?

However, the provider may withhold any information from online disclosure if he or she believes that providing such information may result in significant harm.

Can a patient opt out of health information?

A: A patient can choose not to access their health information, or “opt-out.” Patients cannot be removed from the denominator for opting out of receiving access. If a patient opts out, a provider may count them in the numerator if they have been given all the information necessary to opt back in without requiring any follow up action from the provider, including, but not limited to, a user ID and password, information on the patient website, and how to create an account.

Does CMS require growth charts?

However, because this certification capability is not required, eligible professionals and hospitals do not need to generate and make growth charts available in order to meet the objective.

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.”

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.

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 a patient portal?

Patient portals often are designed in concert with other health care system functions such as scheduling appointments and communicating securely with providers . According to Walker, Sieck, Menser and colleagues , offering a variety of functions is a central component of patient engagement, particularly for patients attempting to self-manage chronic conditions.

Why are patient portals not user friendly?

Let’s start by discussing barriers to portal use. Patient portals have generally not been created to optimize user functionality . In fact, patients report them to be difficult to navigate and not user-friendly. A 2017 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report [pdf] found that while users of patient portals reported being able to view their health information electronically, many patients reported frustrations and difficulties with the portals and their usability. For example, they expressed frustration with the time and effort it took to set up electronic access through their providers, manage multiple passwords for different portals, and understand each portal’s user interface.

Why don't older adults use portals?

In a 2018 national survey, older adults (50-80 years) commonly cited the following reasons for not setting up a patient portal: 1 Did not like communicating about their health by computer (40%) 2 Did not have a need for a portal (38%) 3 Did not know they needed to set something up (33%) 4 Had not gotten around to setting up a portal (29%) 5 Did not feel comfortable with technology (26%)