patient portal use in primary care

Do you have a patient portal?

Patient Portals: How can they impact primary care? Patient portals are becoming more prevalent, as healthcare providers, payers, and patients become more comfortable with their use. A 2017 …

What is my Patient Portal?

On October 2, 2019, PCPCC hosted the webinar, "Patient Portals and Primary Care: What use of a portal could mean for your patients" in which Mary Reed, DrPH, research scientist at the Kaiser …

Do you have the patient portal?

The purpose of this quality improvement project was to increase the number of patients 18 years and older enrolled in the patient portal at a primary care site in rural North Carolina. Increasing …

How online patient portals are transforming health care?

Background: Patient portals offer patients access to their medical information and tools to communicate with health care providers. It has been shown that patient portals have the …

How is patient portal used in healthcare?

What are the benefits of a patient portal?

What are the benefits and challenges of using patient portals?

What is the nurse's role in implementation of patient portals in healthcare?

How do patient portals improve patient outcomes?

Why do patients not use patient portals?

What should be in a patient portal?

Are patient portals effective?

What are the advantages of patient portals to the patient and to the healthcare facility quizlet?

Is a patient portal an EHR?

Lisa Letourneau, MD, MPH, FACP

Dr. Letourneau is an experienced physician and public health advocate who brings extensive experience leading large-scale improvement initiatives and will serve as a contracted consultant for the project assisting with clinical direction, clinician engagement, and advancement of PFE and Choosing Wisely tools clinical practices.

Mary Reed, DrPH

Mary E. Reed, DrPH, is a research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research.

How does a patient portal help?

Among them, patient portals are recognized as a promising mechanism to support greater patient engagement by increasing communication between patients and providers , and enabling patients to make competent and well-informed decisions. Empowered by the rapid development of health information technology and facilitated by the US federal government (e.g., the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, which authorized incentive payments to physicians who demonstrated “meaningful use” of health information systems [ 2 ]), patient portals are now widely available and increasingly being adopted by patients and providers.

What is UF Health?

The study was conducted at UF Health, a medical network associated with the University of Florida (UF). The UF Health network includes two academic hospitals and several other hospitals and facilities in North Central Florida. In 2011, UF Health started offering “MyUFHealth,” also known as MyChart® by Epic®. MyUFHealth is an electronic patient portal that provides patients a secure and convenient way to access portions of their medical records (e.g., released test results, after visit summary), communication with the clinical service providers using secure messaging, request prescription refills, and management of outpatient appointments. MyUFHealth is available to patients who are seen in the UF Health network at Gainesville or Jacksonville hospitals and physician outpatient practices. MyUFHealth pediatric proxy for children under 18 years old is also available and can be established in the UF Health Physicians clinics. Proxy access allows a parent (or guardian) to log into their personal MyUFHealth account, and then connect to the MyUFHealth account of their child. Therefore, children under 18 years old can also be portal users in this study.

How many portals do patients need?

A patient should only need one portal – a comprehensive one maintained by his or her primary care physician (PCP), who shares data with all those specialists and hospitals, gets timely updates, and is great at keeping records.

Do portals talk to each other?

A big problem is that portals are not standardized and often don't talk to each other. Imagine an older patient – a computer literate 71-year-old male who sees a family physician, a dermatologist, an ophthalmologist, an orthopedist, and a urologist, and uses just one hospital.

THE INNOVATION

Patient portals allow both patients and clinicians to share information such as test results, visit summaries, and correspondences. Solo and small primary care practices, however, are challenged with limited resources and with electronic health records (EHRs) that have limited patient portal capabilities.

WHO & WHERE

The Garden Practice Transformation Network focused this initiative on solo and small primary care practices having a total of 176 primary care physicians and practitioners representing 21 practices and 25 Federally Qualified Health Center sites in Maryland.

LEARNING

Solo and small primary care practices benefit from one-on-one coaching including return on investment conversations to use patient portals in patient engagement. Implementing and optimizing patient portals required practice buy-in and workflow reorganization.

Why is educational content important for patients?

Educational content hosted on patient portals can make it easier for patients to take a more active role in their care. They can have access to relevant information about their conditions, medications, all in one place on the Internet. Patients no longer have to sift through a stack of pamphlets just to get the information they need.

Why is engaging patients important?

Engaged patients have better health outcomes, are more satisfied with their care, and are more likely to return to the organization in the future. Educational content hosted on patient portals can make it easier for patients to take a more active role in their care.

Can a patient have access to their own medical records?

Now, patients can take a much more active role in their care by having nearly instant access to their own medical records. In the past, a patient had to get medical records by showing up to the doctor’s office and asking them for a copy. Now, most of the information is digitized. But that’s not all patient portals can do.

Why is patient engagement important?

Engaged patients have better health outcomes, are more satisfied with their care, and are more likely to return to the organization in the future. Educational content hosted on patient portals can make it easier for patients to take a more active role ...