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
Do patient portals enhance patient engagement in the delivery of health care?
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.
Do patient portal interventions improve clinical outcomes?
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 clinical outcomes.
What are the outputs of patient portal implementation studies?
The literature explored some, but not all, potential outputs of patient portal implementations. Most of the studies assessed implementation of patient portals using interim outcomes such as user perceptions, and few studies addressed important objective outcomes such as length of stay, morbidity, or mortality [ 2, 4, 20, 54 ].
Do patient portals facilitate patient discovery of errors in electronic health records?
Several studies reported that patient portals facilitate patient discovery of errors in EMRs [ 24, 26, 30, 54 - 56 ]. Discussion in the literature of how patients could notify health care providers of such errors is lacking. Further research is needed to establish how patient-discovered errors are reported and to identify optimal reporting methods.
What impact do health care portals have on patients and patient care?
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.
Why is patient portal important in healthcare?
A patient portal is a website for your personal health care. The online tool helps you to keep track of your health care provider visits, test results, billing, prescriptions, and so on. You can also e-mail your provider questions through the portal. Many providers now offer patient portals.
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 are the benefits and challenges of implementing 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.
What are some benefits of a patient portal?
The truth is, there are a lot of benefits to using a patient portal for providers.Better Patient Communication. ... Streamline Patient Registration and Administrative Tasks. ... Greater Focus on Patient Care. ... Better Patient-Physician Relationships. ... Improve Clinical Outcomes. ... Optimize Medical Office Workflow.
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 five main features of the new healthcare portal?
Five key features to look for in an EHR patient portalEasy to follow user interface. ... Messaging and communication. ... Registration. ... Scheduling. ... Enhanced security.
How do you increase patient portal engagement?
Increase Patient Portal Use With These 8 TipsMass enrollment. ... Get the whole office involved. ... Use every patient handout or marketing collateral as an opportunity to promote the patient portal. ... Market the benefits, not the features. ... Older patients may surprise you. ... Customize the content of your portal for your patients.More items...•
Are patient portals a part of EHR?
Electronic health record (EHR) patient portals provide a means by which patients can access their health information, including diagnostic test results.
What are the challenges of patient portals?
Patient portals are secure websites that give people access to their personal health information from anywhere, at any time....Table of ContentsGetting Patients to Opt-In.Security Concerns.User Confusion.Alienation and Health Disparities.Extra Work for the Provider.Conclusion.
Are patient portals secure?
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 is a patient portal How will the patient portal enhance the quality of care?
Not only is the patient portal a convenient place for patients and providers to communicate, but it is also the place patients go to understand their personal health. Here, patients can review their care plan so that they can adhere to it more easily and gain instant access to test results in real-time.
What is the nurse's role in implementation of patient portals in healthcare?
Nurses occupy the frontline of patient communication. They play a critical role in encouraging patients to use portals by explaining the benefits, demonstrating their use, and providing reliable information about their security.
What do hospitals patient portals enable patients to do?
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.
What are the challenges of patient portals?
Patient portals are secure websites that give people access to their personal health information from anywhere, at any time....Table of ContentsGetting Patients to Opt-In.Security Concerns.User Confusion.Alienation and Health Disparities.Extra Work for the Provider.Conclusion.
Why are patient portals important?
While the evidence is currently immature, patient portals have demonstrated benefit by enabling the discovery of medical errors, improving adherence to medications, and providing patient-provider communication, etc. High-quality studies are needed to fully understand, improve, and evaluate their impact.
How does a patient portal improve patient engagement?
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 inputs and outputs of a patient portal?
The inputs are the material (eg, hardware and software) and nonmaterial (eg, leadership) components that facilitate or impair the establishment or use of the portal. Processes include the interactions of the users with the portal. Outputs comprise the results of the implementation or the use of the portal. Through the analysis, we identified 14 themes within these three categories, shown in Textbox 1.
How does patient involvement improve quality of care?
Promoting patient involvement in health care delivery may lead to improved quality and safety of care [14,15] by enabling patients to spot and report errors in EMRs, for example [6]. 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]. Portal use may reduce in-person visits, visits to emergency departments, and patient-provider telephone conversations [3,8-10,12,16]. Despite the potential of portals, already used in the ambulatory setting for some time, implementation in the inpatient setting has only recently gathered momentum [17-19]. The inpatient setting presents additional challenges for implementing patient portals [18,20]. Clinical conditions leading to hospitalization are often acute and the amount of medical information generated during this time can be extensive, which may overwhelm patients [20] and challenge information technology to rapidly display this information.
How does EMR help patients?
Hospitals and other health care organizations can facilitate patient access to their EMR information through patient portals. Patient portals can provide secure, online access to personal health information [1] such as medication lists, laboratory results, immunizations, allergies, and discharge information [2]. They can also enable patient-provider communication using secure messaging, appointments and payment management, and prescription refill requests [2,3].
What are organizational factors in healthcare?
Organizational factors: culture of a health care organization; decisions and actions it takes when an initial consideration is made to implement a patient portal
What are barriers in portals?
Barriers: factors that hinder widespread adoption or portal use
How effective are patient portals?
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 clinical outcomes. Understanding the role of patient portals as an effecti …
Why is patient portal important?
Understanding the role of patient portals as an effective intervention strategy is an essential step to encourage patients to be actively engaged in their health care.
How effective are patient portal interventions?
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 clinical outcomes.
What are the challenges of the portal?
One major challenge with the portal is the multiple step registration process . Patients provide their e‐mail address at the front desk and are given a password to register from home. Some patients fail to complete the registration process after leaving the clinic. Remembering and managing passwords and managing family accounts are also challenging for patients. For example, a parent may log in for one child and then ask questions about a second child. For providers and staff, a challenge is that there is no way to know whether a Web‐enabled patient actually uses the portal and there are no read receipts to confirm that patients have read a message.
When did PHMG start patient portal?
PHMG launched the patient portal in early 2010. As a first step, the physician champion piloted the portal for about 6 months before it was implemented in one clinic at a time. According to the physician champion, implementation was “easier than expected because everyone was already comfortable with eClinicalWorks, ...
Why is PHMG monitoring?
Messaging is monitored periodically to ensure that communication with patients is succinct and user-friendly.
How many clinics does PHMG have?
PHMG is an independent medical group with 11 clinics in southwest Idaho, provides both appointment‐based and urgent care. PHMG has 46 health care providers (including 12 mid‐level providers) and averages 200,000 patient visits per year. About half of PHMG’s patients are appointment‐based and half are urgent care. The practice specializes in:
What is the PHMG strategy?
PHMG had a strategy of ensuring that patients hear about the portal from multiple sources during each clinical visit. To execute this strategy, PHMG used several methods of communication, including:
Why is it persuasive to use a portal?
They found that it is particularly persuasive when providers encourage patients to use the portal because patients trust providers and value their opinions. One provider says he reinforces a patient’s use of the portal by closing all messages with “Thanks for using the portal.”.
When did PHMG implement EHR?
In 2007 PHMG implemented an EHR system, eClinicalWorks, as part of a strategy to improve quality of care and facilitate coordination of care across its multiple clinic locations. In preparing for implementation, PHMG proceeded with:
How does mHealth affect pharmacy?
mHealth could affect specialty pharmacies in several ways. Specialty pharmacies manage patients with rare and chronic diseases that require high-cost and complex medications; thus, it is important to have adequate clinical support. Some patient portals and apps include adherence notifications, adverse effect mitigation strategies, and clinical management of disease and therapy. With secure e-mail messaging through patient portals, patients can quickly report adverse effects or dose adjustments, which may be beneficial when the physician’s office is closed.
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 apps do patients use to re-adhere to their medication?
For instance, a patient who wants to increase medication adherence can use apps such as PatientPartner, Medisafe, Dosecast, MedHelper, My Pillbox, or MyMeds. While the variation in mHealth apps caters to patient preferences, the lack of standardization leads to drawbacks for providers. For example, many of these apps either track data differently or, in many cases, do not relay information back to the provider. Patients may record their missed doses through these apps—while refilling their medications on time. This may portray to providers that their patients adhere to their medication even when they do not. 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 mHealth communication?
Communication generally takes the form of secure messaging such as live chat or e-mail among patients and providers , including primary care and specialist physicians, pharmacists, and many others.
Why is mHealth important in pharmacy?
As patient portals and mHealth apps evolve , incorporation of technology in specialty pharmacies presents an excellent opportunity for improving patient care. Ultimately, mHealth technology allows patients to play a role in managing their health and is another form of communication with providers that can lead to better patient outcomes.
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.
