35 hours ago · Introducing a Patient Portal and Electronic Tablets to Inpatient Care. Introducing a Patient Portal and Electronic Tablets to Inpatient Care Ann Intern Med. 2017 Dec 5;167(11):816-817. doi: 10.7326/M17-1766. Epub 2017 Oct 24. Authors Timothy R Huerta 1 ... >> Go To The Portal
At the simplest level, HIT such as a tablet computer offering mobile applications can be a source of entertainment for patients, reducing anxiety during their hospitalization. 12 The use of HIT can also influence patient satisfaction by increasing patients' engagement in their care, as patients who are more activated and invested in their health generally report better healthcare experiences. 13 Patient portals are an example of HIT that may include features that increase patient engagement, including access to a patient's medical record, health education material, appointment scheduling, prescription requests, test results, and secure messaging with their providers. 14 Although the majority of patient portals are currently implemented in outpatient settings, portals are increasingly being introduced in inpatient care.
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Tablets are one tool hospitals use to increase patient engagement during hospitalization, as tablets can provide patients with access to both entertainment options and personal health information through patient portals.
Available via a tablet computer, inpatient portals have the potential to improve patient satisfaction through their influence on patient engagement; however, the effects of both tablets and patient portals on patient engagement, and the implications of this use of HIT on patient satisfaction, remain to be fully elucidated.15
In this context, a patient portal offers features that are tailored to the hospital stay, including the ability for patients to view their daily schedule, order meals, check test results, and communicate with their care team.
At a large midwestern academic medical center, inpatients are offered Android tablets during their hospital stay.
How to get patients to sign up for a patient portalEnroll at the first appointment. ... Auto-enroll to schedule online appointments. ... Include a link to the portal when patients sign in. ... Link your portal sign up on all correspondence. ... Optimize for desktop and mobile. ... Empower all staff to sign patients up. ... Offer incentives.More items...•Aug 12, 2019
A patient portal is a website for your personal health care. The online tool helps you to keep track of your health care provider visits, test results, billing, prescriptions, and so on. You can also e-mail your provider questions through the portal. Many providers now offer patient portals.Aug 13, 2020
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.May 13, 2016
PHRs, EHRs and patient portals PHRs are not the same as electronic health records (EHRs), also called electronic medical records (EMRs), which are owned and maintained by doctors' offices, hospitals or health insurance plans.
Portals can increase patient loyalty. The ongoing relationship and communication that occurs outside of appointments encourages patients to feel cared for and to remain loyal to your practice. Increase your value. Patients value the easy access to information and direct communication that comes with portal use.
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
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.Dec 19, 2019
Takeaways: Patient portals facilitate patient engagement in healthcare decisions, improve communication, and streamline care. Less than one-third of patients access patient portals to view their medical data. Nurses can improve patient portal use by explaining the benefits and providing education.Dec 20, 2021
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...
Electronic health record (EHR) patient portals provide a means by which patients can access their health information, including diagnostic test results. Little is known about portal usage by emergency department (ED) patients.
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
Background: Inpatient portals are online patient portals linked to electronic health records that provide hospitalized patients and caregivers secure access to real-time clinical information and tools to enhance their communication with providers and hospital experience. Objective: The main objective of this commentary was to provide a perspective that inpatient portals are innovative tools poised to engage patients and caregivers during hospitalization and, thus, enhance patient-centered care. Results: Inpatient portals are desired by patients and caregivers and may contribute to improved recognition of their inpatient care team, knowledge of their treatment plan and overall inpatient experience. A sociotechnical systems approach is recommended to mitigate potential unintended consequences of inpatient portal use and support effective portal design, implementation and evaluation. Conclusions: This article highlights the potential of using inpatient portals to engage hospitalized patients and caregivers and proposes next steps to evaluate this emerging technology.
BACKGROUND Web-based outpatient portals help patients engage in the management of their health by allowing them to access their medical information, schedule appointments, track their medications and communicate with their physicians and care team members. Initial studies have shown that portal adoption positively affects health outcomes, but early studies typically relied on survey data. Using data from health portal applications, we conducted systematic assessments of patients’ use of an outpatient portal to examine how patients engage with the tool. OBJECTIVE We aimed to document the functionality of an outpatient portal in the context of outpatient care by mining portal usage data, and to provide insights into how patients use this tool. METHODS Using audit log files from the outpatient portal associated with the electronic health record (EHR) implemented at a large, multi-hospital academic medical center, we investigated the behavioral traces of a study population of 2,607 patients who used the portal between July 2015 and February 2019. Patient portal use was defined as having an active account and having accessed any portal function more than once during the study timeframe. RESULTS Through our analysis of audit logfile data of the number and type of user interactions, we developed a taxonomy of functions and actions, and computed analytic metrics including frequency and comprehensiveness of use. We additionally documented the computational steps required to diagnose artifactual data and arrive at valid usage metrics. CONCLUSIONS In discussing the full methodological choices made in our analysis, we hope to promote the replicability of our study at other institutions and contribute to the establishment of best practices that can facilitate the adoption of behavioral metrics that enable measurement of patient engagement based on outpatient portal use.
BACKGROUND Inpatient portals (IPPs) have the potential to increase patient engagement and satisfaction with their health care. An IPP provides a hospitalized patient with similar functions to those found in outpatient portals, including the ability to view vital signs, laboratory results, and medication information; schedule appointments; and communicate with their providers. However, IPPs may offer additional functions such as meal planning, real-time messaging with the inpatient care team, daily schedules, and access to educational materials relevant to their specific condition. In practice, IPPs have been developed as websites and tablet apps, with hospitals providing the required technology as a component of care during the patient’s stay. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to describe how inpatients are using IPPs at the first academic medical center to implement a system-wide IPP and document the challenges and choices associated with this analytic process. METHODS We analyzed the audit log files of IPP users hospitalized between January 2014 and January 2016. Data regarding the date/time and duration of interactions with each of the MyChart Bedside modules (eg, view lab results or medications and patient schedule) and activities (eg, messaging the provider and viewing educational videos) were captured as part of the system audit logs. The development of a construct to describe the length of time associated with a single coherent use of the tool—which we call a session—provides a foundational unit of analysis. We defined frequency as the number of sessions a patient has during a given provision day. We defined comprehensiveness in terms of the percentage of functions that an individual uses during a given provision day. RESULTS The analytic process presented data challenges such as length of stay and tablet-provisioning factors. This study presents data visualizations to illustrate a series of data-cleaning issues. In the presence of these robust approaches to data cleaning, we present the baseline usage patterns associated with our patient panel. In addition to frequency and comprehensiveness, we present considerations of median data to mitigate the effect of outliers. CONCLUSIONS Although other studies have published usage data associated with IPPs, most have not explicated the challenges and choices associated with the analytic approach deployed within each study. Our intent in this study was to be somewhat exhaustive in this area, in part, because replicability requires common metrics. Our hope is that future researchers in this area will avail themselves of these perspectives to engage in critical assessment moving forward.
Hospitals are employing strategies to enhance patient engagement to improve care quality, as measured by patient satisfaction through the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey . Tablets are one tool hospitals use to increase patient engagement during hospitalization, as tablets can provide patients with access to both entertainment options and personal health information through patient portals. To explore the association between tablet access and patient satisfaction, data on tablet provisioning were linked to patient HCAHPS scores. Patients who were provided a tablet had higher HCAHPS scores in a subset of satisfaction measures, as compared with patients who were not provided a tablet, suggesting that tablets could positively influence patients' satisfaction with their hospital stay. Future studies are warranted to understand the specific ways in which tablet use improves the patient experience during hospitalization.
Patient portals have become more accessible over the last decade. 10 Patients can arrange appointments, review diagnostic test results, request prescription refills, communicate with clinicians, and access their medical records.
Patient portals have become more accessible over the last decade. 10 Patients can arrange appointments, review diagnostic test results, request prescription refills, communicate with clinicians, and access their medical records.