patient portal journal articles

What influences patients to use patient portals?

Feb 10, 2015 · Articles reviewed rarely analyzed a full patient portal but instead analyzed features of a portal such as secure messaging, as well as disease management and monitoring. The ability of patients to be able to view their health information electronically meets the intent of Meaningful Use, Stage 2 requirements, but the ability to transmit to a ...

How many patients in the US use the patient portal?

Findings in the inputs category showed wide-ranging portal designs; patients' privacy concerns and lack of encouragement from providers were among portal adoption barriers while information access and patient-provider communication were among facilitators. Several methods were used to train portal users with varying success.

What are the outputs of patient portal implementation studies?

Conclusions: Current research has demonstrated that patients' interest and ability to use patient portals is strongly influenced by personal factors such age, ethnicity, education level, health literacy, health status, and role as a caregiver. Health care delivery factors, mainly provider endorsement and patient portal usability also contribute ...

What is the portal for patient engagement?

Patient Experience Journal Volume 5|Issue 3 Article 8 2018 Improving the patient experience through patient portals: Insights from experienced portal users Cynthia J. Sieck The Ohio State University, cynthia.sieck@osumc.edu Jennifer L. Hefner The Ohio State University, jennifer.hefner@osumc.edu Ann Scheck McAlearney

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.

What is the purpose of a patient portal?

A patient portal is a secure online website that gives patients convenient, 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an Internet connection. Using a secure username and password, patients can view health information such as: Recent doctor visits. Discharge summaries.

How do patient portals improve patient engagement?

Engaging patients in the delivery of health care has the potential to improve health outcomes and patient satisfaction. Patient portals may enhance patient engagement by enabling patients to access their electronic medical records (EMRs) and facilitating secure patient-provider communication.

How the patient portal is empowering?

July 18, 2017 - Patients enjoy having patient portal health data access because it allows them to take ownership of their own care, makes them feel empowered as partners in their treatments, and helps them detect and identify errors their providers may have made in their medical records, according to a recent study.

What are the disadvantages of patient portals?

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.

Why do patients not use patient portals?

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.

What are the benefits and challenges of using patient portals?

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.

Do patients like patient portals?

Eight studies reported that patients or their caregivers want more portal education, training, or support. Two studies found that their participants want human connection as they learn about the portal and how to use it, as well as when they encounter issues.

How do patient portals contribute to patient centered care?

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.

How safe are 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 types of patient portals are there?

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.

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.”

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.

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, ...

Why is patient portal important?

Patient portal use has the potential to decrease testing redundancy and improve satisfaction. For example, if a patient's entire medical record with a healthcare provider is centrally located within a patient portal, it will be easily accessible for the patient to view, print out, or download.

Is a patient portal a vendor driven system?

Additionally, portal features aren't consistent across facilities. The patient portal is generally an extension of the EHR, so the design and implementation are vendor-driven along with the organization's EHR contract.

What is the Mayo Clinic portal?

The Florida campus of Mayo Clinic implemented the Patient Online Services (patient portal) in 2010, initially providing patients with secure Internet access to their laboratory data. On March 1, 2012, access to outpatient physician notes was added. In May 2011, Mayo Clinic launched the Mayo Clinic Mobile app, which allows patients the same access as the web portal. This app was compatible with Apple iOS initially, and then expanded to Android as well. The app gives patients the flexibility to view their information on the go, to sync appointments to electronic calendars, and to set appointment reminders. The patient portal is tethered to Mayo Clinic Florida’s EHR, PowerChart (Cerner Corporation, North Kansas City, MO, USA). Information is extracted from PowerChart and displayed by Mayo’s proprietary online and mobile-based applications. The date and time that patients access the portal can be determined; however, the content or modules accessed cannot, due to a system limitation with PowerChart.

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.

What happens when patients cannot communicate in real time?

When patients cannot communicate in real time, providers can miss opportunities to identify nonadherence. Thus, there is heavy focus on designing portals and apps similar to MyMeds, which incorporates bidirectional communication between providers and patients.

What is mobile health?

Mobile health (mHealth) is a means of providing health services or information via portals or applications (apps) on wireless devices, such as smartphones or tablets. Patient portals are secure websites that help patients access their health information at their convenience. Many patient portals are mobile enabled via a web-based platform ...

Is a patient portal a form of mHealth?

Many patient portals are mobile enabled via a web-based platform and are therefore considered a form of mHealth. Patient-focused mHealth apps—software or programs stored directly on the mobile device—can provide an opportunity for patient-initiated health or disease management.