health condition patient portal adoption

To accurately gauge the association between patient portal adoption and any impact on the subsequent use of clinical services, it would be instructive to track a large, longitudinal panel of patients across multiple clinics to assess the independent impact of health conditions and patient portal adoption on health care service utilization.

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Are patient portals adoption and adoption difficult?

Mar 02, 2016 · Health care interventions that make the patient more aware of her/his health condition(s) may also promote the use of the EHR portal. Having a population that is better educated and more aware about health status could lead to a greater adoption of eHealth services, especially EHR portals.

What is a patient portal?

Feb 08, 2018 · Patients First leadership views the patient portal as an important way to support “patients as partners.”. The NextMD patient portal was rolled out in August 2010 and serves three core functions: Providing patients with an electronic clinical summary, Providing timely access to lab results, and. Providing secure messaging with clinical and ...

Does patient condition influence portal use among cancer patients?

Social determinants of health have a direct impact on patient portal adoption rates. A recent study revealed that several socioeconomic variables can be used to predict patient portal adoption, including age, income, education, marital status, gender, mental health, number of people in household, chronic disease, and Medicaid enrollment.

Are inpatient portals evidence-based?

Jul 27, 2018 · Because the portal is a tool to maintain and promote health, we considered portal adoption and use as health behaviors that could be studied using Andersen’s model. As shown in Fig. 1, we examined the influence of patients’ characteristics in three major components: predisposing, enabling, and need factors, on portal adoption and use behaviors.

What are the top barriers to patient portal adoption use?

Why do patients not use patient portals?

What are the different types of patient portals?

How do I increase patient portal adoption?

What are the disadvantages of a patient portal?

What is a reason for providers to be reluctant to use a patient portal?

What is included in a patient portal?

What must be done when creating a patient portal?

What is the difference between a personal health record and a patient portal?

Do patient portals improve healthcare?

Are patient portals effective?

What happens if a physician is not implementing EHR when they are eligible to?

When was the NextMD portal rolled out?

Patients First leadership views the patient portal as an important way to support “patients as partners.” The NextMD patient portal was rolled out in August 2010 and serves three core functions:

Why is clinical summary important?

The physician expressed that “the clinical summary is a huge, huge asset to the patient and the family” because it allows information to be shared accurately and efficiently. Providers feel that the clinical summary fosters patient engagement in health care, and helps patients understand what the provider is planning.

Can patients access lab results?

Currently, patients can access their lab results and clinical summaries on the patient portal . Notifications are sent to patients’ personal e-mail alerting them when results or summaries have been posted to the portal and instructing them to login to the system to access the materials.

Why do providers need to adjust to completing their notes at the time of service?

Providers need to adjust to completing their notes at the time of service and writing their notes in plain language because they will be read by patients, rather than relayed to patients by medical personnel. Also, providers and patients need to adjust to secure messaging as a new mode of communication.

What is group communication?

This might include reaching all patients who are due for a specific screening or all patients using a specific medication or medical device to share critical information such as alerts or recalls.

What Are Social Determinants of Health?

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, social determinants of health are “the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality of life outcomes and risks.”

Addressing SDOH with Patient Engagement Technology

Despite these disparities, healthcare practices can use technology to identify and address social determinants of health among the populations they treat. Here’s how:

Is portal use inpatient or outpatient?

Portal use has been studied among outpatients, but its utility and impact on inpatients is unclear. This study describes portal adoption and use among hospitalized cancer patients and investigates associations with selected safety, utilization, and satisfaction measures.

What is the medical admission for cancer?

Medical admissions for cancer patients are usually associated with investigating the origin and cause of disease, or evaluating chemo or radiation treatments, compared to surgical admissions that involve typical procedural routines and surgical recovery that may fully occupy the patient’s time in the hospital [ 73 ].

Where was the retrospective review of 4594 cancer patients conducted?

A retrospective review of 4594 adult hospitalized cancer patients was conducted between 2012 and 2014 at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, comparing portal adopters, who registered for a portal account prior to hospitalization, with nonadopters. Adopters were classified by their portal activity during hospitalization as active or inactive inpatient users. Univariate and several logistic and linear regression models were used for analysis.

How does information technology improve patient safety?

Several studies have assumed that information technology systems have the potential to improve patient safety by identifying errors in medications and preventing adverse drug reactions. Yet, limited evidence exists regarding the effectiveness of a portal as a tool in reducing adverse events. One recent study by Kelly et al. found that 8% of parents with hospitalized children recognized errors in their child’s medication list after using an inpatient portal application [ 46 ]. Further optimistic views about the ability of portals to reduce errors were derived from patient participation in care, where patients could notify clinicians of their medication allergies, unexpected toxicity symptoms, and lapses in care to prevent adverse events [ 50, 75 – 77 ]. Among surgical inpatients who were portal users, postoperative infection was their most frequent ICD-9 code, suggesting that experiencing a safety-event may activate patients to follow up their personal health information to avoid further complications [ 63 ]. In contrast to this evidence, our study did not find an association between portal adoption or use and adverse events. Likewise, a randomized controlled trial by Weingart et al. did not find sufficient evidence to support an association between adverse drug events and portal use [ 51 ]. Earlier research reported that patient history evaluation in cancer care is more focused, providing the patient an opportunity to recall medical and medication information to prevent errors. [ 78, 79] In addition, most adverse events at hospitals are underreported and the events in our data were limited to those reported by providers. A new initiative within the portal that is gaining popularity and has the potential to prevent errors is the OpenNotes national movement, which invites patients to read their clinicians’ notes online and report back errors or safety concerns that, in turn, may avert mistakes from happening [ 80, 81 ]. Hence, it opens up a new possibility to engage patients as safety partners through their reported documentation errors.

Where is the Mayo Clinic?

The site of the study was Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida (MCF), a large nonprofit, specialized tertiary care practice and medical research center with more than 1.3 million domestic and international patients seen each year.

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 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, ...

How does a patient portal help?

Among them, patient portals are recognized as a promising mechanism to support greater patient engagement by increasing communication between patients and providers , and enabling patients to make competent and well-informed decisions. Empowered by the rapid development of health information technology and facilitated by the US federal government (e.g., the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, which authorized incentive payments to physicians who demonstrated “meaningful use” of health information systems [ 2 ]), patient portals are now widely available and increasingly being adopted by patients and providers.

What is UF Health?

The study was conducted at UF Health, a medical network associated with the University of Florida (UF). The UF Health network includes two academic hospitals and several other hospitals and facilities in North Central Florida. In 2011, UF Health started offering “MyUFHealth,” also known as MyChart® by Epic®. MyUFHealth is an electronic patient portal that provides patients a secure and convenient way to access portions of their medical records (e.g., released test results, after visit summary), communication with the clinical service providers using secure messaging, request prescription refills, and management of outpatient appointments. MyUFHealth is available to patients who are seen in the UF Health network at Gainesville or Jacksonville hospitals and physician outpatient practices. MyUFHealth pediatric proxy for children under 18 years old is also available and can be established in the UF Health Physicians clinics. Proxy access allows a parent (or guardian) to log into their personal MyUFHealth account, and then connect to the MyUFHealth account of their child. Therefore, children under 18 years old can also be portal users in this study.