research on patient portal effectiveness

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.

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Do patient portals improve clinical outcomes?

Effects of patient portal interventions on clinical outcomes including blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, and weight loss were mixed. Conclusions: Patient portal interventions were overall effective in improving a few psychological outcomes, medication adherence, and preventive service use. There was insufficient evidence to support the use of patient portals to improve …

What are the factors that influence patient portal use?

Feb 10, 2015 · Despite the advantages of a patient portal, there has not been widespread adoption of this patient-centered tool in the United States . Additionally, research shows that although a provider can make a patient portal available to a patient, it does not necessarily result in a healthier patient . As incentives came to a close at the end of 2014, the authors pondered if …

Do patient portals offer meaningful use incentives?

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 to patient's ability to engage through …

Are patient portal users able to interpret lab results accurately?

May 17, 2016 · Positive incidents among clinicians were classified into 2 main areas: (1) patients feel empowered (5/9, 56%) and (2) the portal can generate office efficiency (4/9, 44%). Develops Patient Empowerment. Over half of all positive incidents involved the belief that patient access to medical information was beneficial.

How effective are patient portals?

Better Patient-Physician Relationships 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.Dec 8, 2017

Do patient portals improve healthcare?

Background. 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.

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.Feb 17, 2016

Does a patient portal satisfy meaningful use?

Satisfaction with patient portal Respondents generally reported satisfaction with the functioning of the portal (Appendix Figure 1). More than 96% of survey respondents were either very satisfied (66.5%) or satisfied (30.0%) with the patient portal overall (3% were dissatisfied and 1.5% were very dissatisfied).Feb 21, 2014

Why is a patient portal important?

Portals can increase patient loyalty. The ongoing relationship and communication that occurs outside of appointments encourages patients to feel cared for and to remain loyal to your practice. Increase your value. Patients value the easy access to information and direct communication that comes with portal use.

How do you improve patient portals?

Here are some ways to encourage patient enrollment:Include information about the patient portal on your organization's website.Provide patients with an enrollment link before the initial visit to create a new account.Encourage team members to mention the patient portal when patients call to schedule appointments.More items...•Jun 25, 2020

What are the cons 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.Nov 11, 2021

What are the pros and cons of personal health records?

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

Why do some patients fail to participate in the use of the patient portal?

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.

Why is the patient portal a good tool for patient engagement?

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.May 13, 2016

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 is meaningful use?

'Meaningful Use' is the general term for the Center of Medicare and Medicaid's (CMS's) electronic health record (EHR) incentive programs that provide financial benefits to healthcare providers who use appropriate EHR technologies in meaningful ways; ways that benefit patients and providers alike.

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

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.

Is electronic communication second nature?

For many patients, the use of Web-based information and electronic communication is “second nature”; consequently, they are comfortable using the portal. As one clinician observed, “Lots of patients are accustomed to using electronic communication now. They don’t want to have to pick up the phone anymore.”.

How many patients use EHR portals?

Ninety percent of health care systems now offer patient portals to access electronic health records (EHRs) in the United States, but only 15% to 30% of patients use these platforms. Using PubMed, the authors identified 53 studies published from September 2013 to June 2019 that informed best practices and priorities for future research on patient engagement with EHR data through patient portals, These studies mostly involved outpatient settings and fell into 3 major categories: interventions to increase use of patient portals, usability testing of portal interfaces, and documentation of patient and clinician barriers to portal use. Interventions that used one-on-one patient training were associated with the highest portal use. Patients with limited health or digital literacy faced challenges to portal use. Clinicians reported a lack of workflows to support patient use of portals in routine practice. These studies suggest that achieving higher rates of patient engagement through EHR portals will require paying more attention to the needs of diverse patients and systematically measuring usability as well as scope of content. Future work should incorporate implementation science approaches and directly address the key role of clinicians and staff in promoting portal use.

Why is patient-professional communication important?

Good patient-professional communication is a prerequisite for high-quality care and patient centeredness. Understanding health care professionals’ experiences of web-based patient-professional communication is important as they play a key role in engaging patients to use portals.

What is a PHR system?

Electronic personal health record systems (PHRs) support patient centered healthcare by making medical records and other relevant information accessible to patients, thus assisting patients in health self-management. We reviewed the literature on PHRs including design, functionality, implementation, applications, outcomes, and benefits. We found that, because primary care physicians play a key role in patient health, PHRs are likely to be linked to physician electronic medical record systems, so PHR adoption is dependent on growth in electronic medical record adoption. Many PHR systems are physician-oriented, and do not include patient-oriented functionalities. These must be provided to support self-management and disease prevention if improvements in health outcomes are to be expected. Differences in patient motivation to use PHRs exist, but an overall low adoption rate is to be expected, except for the disabled, chronically ill, or caregivers for the elderly. Finally, trials of PHR effectiveness and sustainability for patient self-management are needed.

What is smart doctor?

Smart Doctors Appointment and Prescription System is an application that provides services to the Doctors and Patients. The Doctor’s Appointment and Prescription system connects between Doctor and Patients using web and android apps and patients are able to search a Doctor and ask for his/her appointment as well as for prescription using their Smartphone. This application shows the Doctors the previous history of a particular patient and can prescribe on basis of the history of patient. The main objective of this research is connecting doctor and patient very quickly and easily from any location without any involvement of any third party. Any doctor and patient can easily use this application by registering themselves, and doctor can prescribe the patient based on disease using listed medicine and number of days etc. This system also notifies the Doctor and patient through apps about the request of doctor appointment and prescription within shortage possible time.