reason for providers to be reluctant to use a patient portal

Reasons for nonuse included the desire to speak directly to providers and privacy concerns, both of which require recognition of the important role of provider communication and patient-provider relationships. TOPICS Access to care

Full Answer

Why don’t people use patient portals?

Mar 21, 2019 · If the chosen EHR included a patient portal, which most did, it was a no-brainer for providers to implement its basic components, often with a poorly defined plan for adding modules when MU deadlines were no longer looming.

What are the functions of a medical portal?

Dec 10, 2018 · Compared with users of portals, nonusers were more likely to be male, be covered by Medicaid, lack a regular provider, and have less than a college education. Nonwhites less likely to report being offered access. Patients cited a desire to speak directly to providers and privacy concerns as reasons for not using portals.

Are patient portals adoption and adoption difficult?

May 14, 2019 · 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. “Health care providers and plans can increase patients’ use of portals and narrow disparities in that use through direct ...

Is a new communications model for patient portals necessary?

Patients have no interest. 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.

What is a reason for providers to be reluctant to use a patient portal?

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.May 14, 2019

What are the cons of a patient portal?

Con: Difficult patient buy-in The most frequently reported downside to patient portals is the difficulty providers often face in generating patient buy-in. Although providers are generally aware of the health perks of using a patient portal, patients are seldom as excited about the portal as they are.Feb 17, 2016

For what reasons might a provider not want to accept a patient?

The most common reason for refusing to treat a patient is the patient's potential inability to pay for the required medical services. Still, doctors cannot refuse to treat patients if that refusal will cause harm.Sep 8, 2021

What are the benefits and challenges of implementing a patient portal?

Patient portals satisfy meaningful use standards Improve quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce health disparities. Increase patient engagement. Improve care coordination. Expand population and public health.Jul 15, 2019

What are the pros and cons of being an e patient?

4 Pros and Cons of Digital Patient Health Data AccessPro: Patients enjoy digital data access.Con: Complicated health info causes concern for patients, docs.Pro: Patients can review info for medical errors.Con: Clinician notes raise patient-provider relationship concerns.Aug 10, 2017

What are the downsides in restricting access to EHRs?

Barriers Restricting Access to EHR Data in Support of Patient Safety and Privacy Laws Can Lead to Diagnostic Errors, Some Involving Clinical Laboratory Tests.Nov 7, 2016

Can nurses refuse patients?

The American Nurses Association (ANA) upholds that registered nurses – based on their professional and ethical responsibilities – have the professional right to accept, reject or object in writing to any patient assignment that puts patients or themselves at serious risk for harm.

Why would a patient refuse treatment?

Patients may refuse treatments for many reasons, including financial concerns, fear, misinformation, and personal values and beliefs. Exploring these reasons with the patient may reveal a solution or a different approach.May 24, 2016

What should a nurse do when a patient refuses treatment?

If your patient refuses treatment or medication, your first responsibility is to make sure that he's been informed about the possible consequences of his decision in terms he can understand. If he doesn't speak or understand English well, arrange for a translator.

Why the use of patient portals are beneficial?

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 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 disadvantages of personal health records?

Are there drawbacks to PHRs? Building a complete health record takes some time. You have to collect and enter all your health information. Only a minority of doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and insurance companies can send information electronically to a PHR that isn't part of a patient portal.

Why are portals so complicated?

A big issue for many users is that portals are simply too complicated for at least two opposite kinds of users: those who have low computer literacy, and those who are so computer savvy that they expect the simplicity of an Uber or Instagram app to get a test result or appointment with a click or two.

How many benefits do portals provide?

Similarly, healthcare providers can achieve at least three big benefits from patients’ portal-usage: greater efficiencies, cost-savings and improved health outcomes — again, only if patients use their portals. But with only 20% of patients regularly relying on portals, many benefits have been unattainable.

Can rapid access replace patient rights?

Rapid access cannot replace patients’ rights to understand. Even if a test result isn’t recognizably negative, a portal presentation of an uninterpreted report can be painful to patients and certainly unproductive.

Is the portal concept slow?

Acceptance of the portal concept continues to be slow, especially within physicians’ offices and small to middle size hospitals. Though these providers implemented portals via their Meaningful Use / MIPS incentives, portals are often not treated as a central communications tool. Patient engagement? Yes…a laudable objective for policymakers — but many physicians already lament the deep cuts in their daily patient schedule that have been created by complex EHR-related obligations. The added work of portal interaction has been the opposite of a pot-sweetener, despite touted financial benefits.

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 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 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, ...

What data can be recorded on a mobile app?

Mobile apps have the capability to record several types of data, such as activity level, nutrition, and sleep, as well as data related to a consumer's condition or disease, such as diabetes or asthma.

Why do patients use portals?

This ability for patients to request appointments, referrals, and prescription refills directly from the portal increases the efficiency of your clinical staff, allowing them to keep their focus on assisting you with the patients who have the most urgent care needs and questions.

What is a patient portal?

Patient portals provide the ability for patients to have 24-hour access to connect with their provider by reviewing patient health information (PHI), asking and answering questions, and reviewing notes, making the patient-physician relationship closer than ever.

What are the benefits of cloud based patient portals?

As you can see, there are a host of benefits medical providers can take advantage of by using cloud based patient portals Better communication, elimination of paperwork, unrestricted electronic access, better relationships, improved outcomes, and an optimized workflow – all of these benefits can be achieved with one piece of technology.

Highlights

Listen attentively to the patient telling his/her story and then share benefits, risks, and alternatives to various treatments, while giving the patient the dignity of making his/her own choice.

Margaret Chisolm, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

For years I was mystified that whenever I was seeing a new patient for the first time, he/she would begin the meeting by announcing, “I have no interest in being on an antidepressant medication and am here for psychotherapy only.”

Mike Fingerhood, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

1.) Ask, “Is there something I can do to help us work together on this?”

Panagis Galiatsatos, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

A reluctant patient has more concerns then what’s currently visible in the immediate situation.

Michael Crocetti, MD, Johns Hopkins Community Physicans

When I sense reluctance the first thing I do is stop talking, relax my body, sit at the level of the patient, and simply listen.