patient portal and patient outcomes

by Mr. Aric Stanton IV 8 min read

Using Patient Portals to Improve Patient Outcomes ...

5 hours ago 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. Effects of patient portal interventions on clinical outcomes including blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, and weight loss were mixed. >> Go To The Portal


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. Effects of patient portal interventions on clinical outcomes including blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, and weight loss were mixed.

Full Answer

How do patient portals affect clinical outcomes?

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. Effects of patient portal interventions on clinical outcomes including blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, and weight loss were mixed.

Do patient portal interventions improve psychobehavioral outcomes?

Feb 10, 2015 · Very few studies associated use of the patient portal, or its features, to improved outcomes; 37% (10/27) of papers reported improvements in medication adherence, disease awareness, self-management of disease, a decrease of office visits, an increase in preventative medicine, and an increase in extended office visits, at the patient’s request for additional …

Does patient portal use improve patient-centered care in patients with diabetes?

Five studies reported overall patient portal use and its association with diabetes health and health care quality outcomes. Six studies reported e-messaging or email use-associated outcomes, and two studies reported prescription refill-associated outcomes. The reported health outcomes included the associations of patient portal use with blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein …

Do health information technology portals improve outcomes?

Jun 08, 2020 · Data showed that patients who regularly used the patient portal were between 2 and 4 percent less likely to be hospitalized, which can amount to thousands of patients for the typical mid-sized hospital, the researchers said. When a hospitalization can cost up to $30,000 per patient, this can result in astronomical cost savings.

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Do patient portals improve outcomes?

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.

How can the patient portal affect patient satisfaction?

Our model shows that patient portal use can influence patient satisfaction through the mediating effects of gratification, health self-awareness, and health perception. ... Therefore, by promoting effective patient portal use and fostering patient perceptions, health care organizations can improve patient satisfaction.

What are the benefits 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

How do you define patient outcomes?

Based on our concept analysis of the literature, we define 'patient outcomes' more simply as the results of the nursing care that patients receive in hospital including maintenance of patient functional status, maintenance of patient safety, and patient satisfaction.

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

How do patients feel about patient portals?

Some patients recognize the role of patient portals in their health care, reporting satisfaction with the ability to communicate with their health care teams and perform tasks such as requesting prescription refills conveniently [3,16].

What is the goal of hie?

Electronic health information exchange (HIE) allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists, other health care providers and patients to appropriately access and securely share a patient's vital medical information electronically—improving the speed, quality, safety and cost of patient care.Jul 24, 2020

How do patient portals affect nursing?

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

What safeguards are included in patient portals?

Patient portals have privacy and security safeguards in place to protect your health information. To make sure that your private health information is safe from unauthorized access, patient portals are hosted on a secure connection and accessed via an encrypted, password-protected logon.

What are examples of patient outcomes?

Outcome measures reflect the impact of the health care service or intervention on the health status of patients. For example: The percentage of patients who died as a result of surgery (surgical mortality rates). The rate of surgical complications or hospital-acquired infections.

How do you write a patient outcome?

Terms in this set (8)criteria outcomes must have. A goal or outcome statement should be: ... patient -centered. reflect patient behaviors and responses.Singular Goal or Outcome. Do not group multiple goals or outcomes into one goal or outcome. ... Observable. ... Measurable. ... Time-Limited. ... Mutual Factors. ... Realistic.

What are examples of health outcomes?

Frequently used outcome indicators are infant mortality rate, condition-specific mortality rate, age-adjusted mortality rate, years of potential life lost, life expectancy at birth, leading causes of death, and percentage of adults who report fair or poor health.Jul 10, 2010

How do patient portals affect health care?

Patient portals affect clinical outcomes, health service utilization, patient adherence, patient–provider communication, patient empowerment, and patient satisfaction with health services by four mechanisms. These mechanisms are: patient insight into information, activation of information, interpersonal continuity of care, and service convenience. The significance of these mechanisms differs per outcome. Reported outcomes of patient portals derive mostly from large and organized health service networks. In highly organized health service networks, patient portals appear to be complements to disease management programs rather than substitutes for these services. Paradoxically, patient portals may have higher impact in more fragmented contexts that are less conducive to patient portal implementation and use.

What are the benefits of patient portals?

The evaluations indicated that patient portals could lead to improvements in clinical outcomes, patient adherence, patient–provider communication, patient empowerment, and patient satisfaction with health services.

What are the contributions of TO-T?

TO-T made substantial contributions to study conception and design, acquisition of data, data analysis, and interpretation of data, drafted the article and revised it critically for important intellectual content, and provided final approval of the version published. AdB made substantial contributions to study conception and design, data analysis, and interpretation of data, revised the article critically for important intellectual content, and provided final approval of the version published. TGR made substantial contributions to study conception and design and as well as interpretation of data, revised the article critically for important intellectual content, and provided final approval of the version published. JvdK made substantial contributions to study conception and design as well as interpretation of data, revised the article critically for important intellectual content, and provided final approval of the version published.

When did the health insurance act give patients the right to view their medical records?

In 1996 , the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act gave patients the legal right to view and own their medical records. 1 Unrestricted patient access to medical records was somewhat difficult in the era of paper charts, but after the introduction of the electronic health record (EHR) and, subsequently, EHR-tethered personal health record electronic entry, or “patient portals,” patients’ access to their records became less challenging.

What is EHR used for?

The EHR was used to obtain information on patient demographics (age at admission, sex, race, ethnicity, marital status, primary language, payor information, and employment status) and clinical information known at the time of admission (admission status, admission service, and comorbidities), and hospital outcomes (30-day readmission, 30-day mortality, and inpatient mortality). Principal and secondary diagnoses and procedures, comorbidities, and All-Patient Refined Diagnosis Related Group (APR-DRG) weight 16 were collected based on International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification codes extracted from hospital discharge abstracts. Hospital length of stay (LOS) was calculated using the dates and times of hospital admission and hospital discharge.

When was the Mayo Clinic retrospective study?

This retrospective study included all adult patients admitted to Mayo Clinic Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, from August 1, 2012, to July 31, 2014, who had a patient portal account prior to hospitalization. If a patient had more than one inpatient admission during this time frame, only the demographic and clinical data from the first encounter was collected and analyzed. Patients were excluded if they were under 18 years of age at the time of admission. Hospital observation stays were not included. The study was approved by the Mayo Clinic Institutional Review Board.

How does a patient portal work?

And as a result, the patient portal works to cut healthcare costs, promising a positive return on investment for healthcare organizations. When patients are healthier, they require fewer healthcare interventions, and in turn spark less healthcare spending.

How long does it take for a hospital to readmission?

Hospital readmission is measured as having more than one hospital admission within a 30-day period, and is a key clinical quality measure for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) alternative payment programs. When patients were frequent patient portal users, they yielded 2 percent fewer hospital readmissions, the researchers reported.

When did Dover Family Physicians adopt EHR?

Dover Family Physicians adopted an electronic health record (EHR) system in 2008 with a goal of improving the quality of patient care and especially strengthening preventive care services. The practice has focused on ways to use the EHR to engage patients and their family members in their health and healthcare through a patient portal implementation. The practice, located in Dover, Delaware, has four physicians and two physician assistants, and provides primary care to more than 800 patients weekly.

How to get the most value from an EHR?

To get the most value from an EHR, practices will need to invest time in training and preparation. Some customization of the system will likely be needed based on how the practice functions and the individual work styles of the various providers.

What are the limitations of EHR?

The limitations of the EHR and the patient portal have presented challenges, such as the inability to send clinical summaries to patients via the portal. The practice can only move ahead with certain aspects of patient and family engagement as quickly as the system is upgraded.

How long does it take for a nurse to respond to a patient?

The practice established standards for response times of within 4 hours for more urgent questions to 2 days for prescription refills

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Background and Significance

  • Health service organizations increasingly implement patient portals based on the belief that patient portals will enhance patient engagement, health outcomes, service efficiency, and convenience.1 A patient portal is a ‘secure website for patients, typically maintained by provider practices, that offers access to a variety of functions linked to a physician's EHR [electronic heal…
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Objective

  • Based on the realist line of thinking, the review aims to synthesize and analyze evaluations of patient portals to explain the reported outcomes. Our two main research questions are: 1. By what mechanism(s) do patient portals contribute to outcomes? 2. How can variations in outcomes across different contexts be explained?
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Materials and Methods

  • We adhered to the realist review method described in the RAMESES publication standards, published in 2013.4The reporting of our methods and results follows these standards.
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Results

  • Document flow diagram
    Figure 1illustrates the paper selection flow that led to a total of 32 evaluation studies.
  • Document characteristics
    Eleven studies evaluated the effect of a patient portal, portal module, or program offered through a patient portal on clinical outcomes. Eight studies examined the impact on healthcare utilization, and six looked into the effect on patient adherence. Patient–provider communication was an en…
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Discussion

  • Summary of findings
    Using a realist lens, we set out to answer (1) by what mechanism(s) patient portals contribute to outcomes, and (2) how variations in outcome across different contexts can be explained. To the first question, although not empirically tested, patient portal evaluators suggest at least four me…
  • Strengths and limitations
    We found that the studies rarely detail the mechanisms by which an intervention is expected to work. Consequently, the studies are not designed to empirically test the mechanisms that could explain how patient portals improve outcomes. Combined with a scarcity of small-scale context…
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Conclusion

  • Patient portals affect clinical outcomes, health service utilization, patient adherence, patient–provider communication, patient empowerment, and patient satisfaction with health services by four mechanisms. These mechanisms are: patient insight into information, activation of information, interpersonal continuity of care, and service convenience. The significance of the…
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Acknowledgements

  • We thank Jos Aarts for his thoughtful comments on earlier versions of the paper. We would also like to thank representatives from ZorgPortaal Rijnmond and PAZIO for their interest and support to study patient portals in the Dutch health system. Finally, we are grateful to Marleen de Mul for her continuous support of this research..
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Contributions

  • TO-T made substantial contributions to study conception and design, acquisition of data, data analysis, and interpretation of data, drafted the article and revised it critically for important intellectual content, and provided final approval of the version published. AdB made substantial contributions to study conception and design, data analysis, and interpretation of data, revised t…
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Funding

  • The research was supported by a grant from the Innovation Fund of the Institute of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam.
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Background

  • In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act gave patients the legal right to view and own their medical records.1Unrestricted patient access to medical records was somewhat difficult in the era of paper charts, but after the introduction of the electronic health record (EHR) and, subsequently, EHR-tethered personal health record electronic entry, or “patien…
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Materials and Methods

  • Study design and subjects
    This retrospective study included all adult patients admitted to Mayo Clinic Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, from August 1, 2012, to July 31, 2014, who had a patient portal account prior to hospitalization. If a patient had more than one inpatient admission during this time frame, onl…
  • Data collection
    The EHR was used to obtain information on patient demographics (age at admission, sex, race, ethnicity, marital status, primary language, payor information, and employment status) and clinical information known at the time of admission (admission status, admission service, and comorbi…
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Results

  • We identified 17 050 patients in the study period: 7538 (44.2%) had a portal account established at the time of admission and 9512 (55.8%) did not. Of the patients who already had portal accounts, 1566 (20.8%) accessed the portal during hospitalization. Patients’ preadmission characteristics before matching are summarized in Table 1and show substantial differences (st…
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Discussion

  • The primary objective of this study was to compare patients with portal accounts who accessed and did not access the portal during hospitalization and to determine if there was an association between inpatient portal use and 30-day readmissions and mortality. In this study, patients who accessed their portal account were younger and had greater disease severity and more urgent a…
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Conclusion

  • This is the first study to examine the association between 30-day readmissions, 30-day mortality, and inpatient mortality and inpatient portal use. We found that there was no difference in 30-day readmissions, inpatient mortality, or 30-day mortality between portal and non–portal users and that inpatient portal use was low. The first step in determining whether patient portal use can im…
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Funding

  • This work was supported by the Robert D and Patricia E Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida.
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Contributors

  • AGD, MCB, and NLD conceived and designed the study. AGD, LMN, and CST collected the data. CST and JMN analyzed the data, designed the statistical method, and drafted the tables. AGD, MCB, NLD, and CST drafted the article. HEG, DIA, and JMN critically revised the article for important intellectual content. All co-authors contributed to writing, proofreading, and editing th…
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