22 hours ago Our meta-analysis showed an overall mean adoption rate of 52% (95% Confidence Interval [CI], 42 to 62%). Rates differed markedly between study types: controlled experiments yielded a mean adoption rate of 71% (95% CI 64 to 79%), compared to 23% (95% CI, 13 to 33%) in real-world … >> Go To The Portal
How to Improve Patient Portal Adoption, Registration RatesConduct patient outreach, education.Considering hard-to-reach populations.Using the patient portal in public health efforts.
Burying lab results or not offering access to clinician notes will likely keep patients from seeing the utility of the portal. Even if providers offer this health data, making it difficult for patients to navigate to it will reduce the utility in the technology.
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.
PHRs, EHRs and patient portals A PHR that is tied to an EHR is called a patient portal. In some but not all cases you can add information, such as home blood pressure readings, to your record via a patient portal. If that's the case, you may not want to create a separate, standalone PHR .
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.
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.
Top 10 Patient Portal Software By EMRSystemsEpic EHR Software's MyChart.athenahealth EMR Software's athenaCommunicator.PrognoCIS EMR Software.Cerner Specialty Practice Management Software.eClinicalWorks EMR Software's Patient Portal and Healow App.Greenway PrimeSUITE EHR Software.NextGen Healthcare EHR Software.More items...•
Healthcare IT rating agency KLAS recently selected athenahealth's athenaCommunicator as the #1 patient portal, with a score of 91.8 on the most recent Best in KLAS awards . athenahealth's suite was also ranked #2 overall for practice sizes from 1-75 physicians.
The researchers found no demographic differences among nonusers who said that a technology hurdle, lack of internet access or no online medical record was the reason why they did not make use of a patient portal.
Patient Portals are populated by EMR data, and not updatable by the patient directly.
The features of patient portals may vary, but typically you can securely view and print portions of your medical record, including recent doctor visits, discharge summaries, medications, immunizations, allergies, and most lab results anytime and from anywhere you have Web access.
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.
Communication is how your practice makes your patients aware that you even have a portal. This becomes the responsibility of all the staff within your practice. Starting with the front office who will most likely come into contact with the patient first. Mentioning the portal should be within their standard script.
Education is making sure the patient understands the purpose of the portal and how to use the portal. Education and information regarding your patient portal should be given to each patient during the first initial contact made between the patient and your practice.
You have now communicated to your patients that your practice has a portal. You have educated your patients how to use the portal. The last step is to promote your portal. Sometimes the best way to get someone to do what you would like them to do is to offer incentives.
After promoting the portal at the initial launch, it is critical to reinforce the value of using the portal and to periodically undertake promotional efforts, especially when new portal features are 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:
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.
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.
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 ].
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.
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.
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.
Background: Patient portals are an effective way of engaging patients to become active participants in their health; however, getting patients to actively use portals in the outpatient setting is challenging.
An important area of discussion is the use of patient portals or web portals and its relation to patient engagement. The term “patient engagement” is commonly used but often poorly understood in healthcare. Therefore, for this discussion, patient engagement is defined as the patient’s capability and willingness to actively decide to participate in their healthcare and collaborate with a healthcare facility or provider for the goal of improvement in care or positive outcomes (Higgins et al., 2017). Providers can promote patient engagement through health information technology (HIT) by using practical and appealing designs to maximize patient involvement (Higgins et al., 2017; Schnall et al., 2016).
Portal activity was monitored, and the portal feedback form was used to guide any necessary changes that should be made either to the portal or to the program to assist in project sustainability. Data was collected and analyzed by the team leader and team members, including the clinic lead for eClinicalWorks and Healow portal system. The number of registered patients with verification via eClinicalWorks were collected and compared to the number of registered patients prior to the initiative. AHRQ feedback forms and PHE-5 scales were collected and counted to assess for patient engagement and portal feedback. Pre and post-PHE-5 scales were collected and given to a third-party statistician to assess for patient engagement. The overarching aim of increasing patient engagement by 60% of participating patients was measured via the PHE-5 scores and information collected from portal analytics. Additional factors, such as no-show rates, portal analytics, and MU metrics were collected and given to clinic administrators and providers.