limitations of patient portal to patient computer or mobile device

by Cletus Rolfson MD 8 min read

Patient portals and health apps: Pitfalls, promises, and ...

21 hours ago 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 … >> Go To The Portal


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

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 …

Are patient-facing IT tools patient portals or applications more effective?

Feb 17, 2016 · 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. However, with appropriate safeguards, these concerns can be kept at a minimum.

Is the patient portal safe to use?

May 23, 2017 · 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. Patients will appreciate being able to check into the system to …

Is the patient portal the future of patient care?

Sep 01, 2017 · In this paper, we discuss two forms of patient-facing health IT tools—patient portals and applications (apps)—and highlight how, despite several limitations of each, combining high-yield features of mobile health (mHealth) apps with portals could increase patient engagement and self-management and be more effective than either of them alone.

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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 is the most common barrier to the use of the patient portal?

Among the nonadopters (n=2828), the most prevalent barriers were patient preference for in-person communication (1810/2828, 64.00%), no perceived need for the patient portal (1385/2828, 48.97%), and lack of comfort and experience with computers (735/2828, 25.99%).Sep 17, 2020

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

4 Problems With Electronic Health RecordsSecurity Risks From Criminal Computer Hackers. ... Data Bottlenecks Because of a Poorly Designed Interface. ... Staff Needs Training to Switch from Paper to Electronic Health Records. ... Individuals With Poor Typing Skills May Be Slowed Down Using an EHR.More items...•Oct 16, 2019

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

What are the barriers to implementing PHRs?

A series of issues have been repeatedly listed as key barriers to the use of PHRs by patients and physicians including, privacy and security concerns, costs, integrity, accountability, and health literacy. PHRs have given control to the consumer and have provided patients with autonomy and empowerment.

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.

How many patients actually use patient portals?

FINDINGS. Nearly 40 percent of individuals nationwide accessed a patient portal in 2020 – this represents a 13 percentage point increase since 2014.Sep 21, 2021

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 disadvantages of electronic health records?

There are also several disadvantages of electronic medical records, such as: Potential Privacy and Security Issues: As with just about every computer network these days, EHR systems are vulnerable to hacking, which means sensitive patient data could fall into the wrong hands.May 23, 2018

What are challenges for patients that do not have access to all of the PHRs?

Between underutilization of technology, lack of patient education, and inadequate health IT interoperability, patients and providers are struggling to ensure robust patient health data access.Underutilized patient portals.Ambiguous security protocols.Limited health data interoperability.Aug 11, 2016

What are the advantages of using a patient portal?

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 of patient portals?

The truth is, there are a lot of benefits to using a patient portal for providers.Better Patient Communication. ... Streamline Patient Registration and Administrative Tasks. ... Greater Focus on Patient Care. ... Better Patient-Physician Relationships. ... Improve Clinical Outcomes. ... Optimize Medical Office Workflow.Dec 8, 2017

What are some of the barriers to patient understanding of online healthcare information?

In regards to computer use, the majority of the sample (70%) indicated lack of free time as a barrier to computer use at least some of the time, with other barriers including problems with internet connectivity (39%), lack of computer skills (37%), other family members using the computer (35%), and literacy (31%).

What barriers do you believe exist to implementation of EHR?

The most significant barriers were lack of national information standards and code sets (62 percent), lack of available funding (59 percent), concern about physician (51 percent), and lack of interoperability (50 percent) (8).

Which of the following are potential barriers to telehealth services?

There are “seven deadly barriers” for telemedicine: money, regulations, hype, adoption, technology, evidence, and success. Some of these are shared with health care in general and some are new kinds of barriers that accompany the transformation of health care by telemedicine.

What are the benefits of patient portals?

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.

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.

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.

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, ...

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 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 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.

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