Included in this paper will be my attempt to discuss the advantages and disadvantages with patients and providers communicating via patient portals. First, What is a Patient Portal? Patient Portals are healthcare related online applications that allow patients to interact and communicate with healthcare providers, such as physicians and hospitals. (Wilkipedia) The portal allows you to see, recent doctors visit, discharge summaries, Medications, Immunizations, allergies, and Lab results. Through a patient portal, Providers can also send patients post visit instructions, post clinical summaries and lab results via an attachment. This works well if you only go to one set of physicians in a group, such as a hospital portal. Many of us have probably …show more content…
Most patient portals are linked to one physician’s office, which means that most patients will have to log on to numerous medical providers portals. Lets take a family of three in consideration. They would have to log on the Pediatrician, the Gynecologist and the Family doctor patient portals to obtain their medical information. Although one of the benefits of Patient Portal is that patients can send questions by way of email. It may become a challenge deciphering what a patient is asking. There is also the risk of giving incorrect information in response to a patient’s question. Systems have to be set up using a delivery system that guarantees emails have been received, viewed and responded to. Another set of challenges is related to clinicians and staff who have concerns about managing online communication. Providers are concerned that e-mail and web would add to their workload rather than substitute for other tasks, and that many messages might not be clinically relevant. (Slabodkin, 2015) In addition, there is currently little consensus about the rules of patient-provider online interactions and the important role that can be played by staff in responding to certain types of messages. In general, patients are unaccustomed to online communication in clinic settings. Another important challenge is the growing digital gap in the community. Not everyone has a computer or even access to a computer. It’s hard to believe, but there is a …show more content…
Many providers now agree that the use of the Internet such as patient portals results in a more inquisitive and informed patient. (Gwen Van Servellen)One disadvantage as mentioned by Yonette Leacock, an employee of a local hospital, when patients received results prior to speaking to their physicians, patients would read the results and call the radiology department to ask for certain things meant. “One patient actually called and argued with the radiologist about why he describe her as obese in his report”. But as a patient, Yonette agrees that she receives her results in a timely manner and is able to conduct business in efficient manner, instead of calling in and being on hold at her doctors office. Portals are usually linked to a single hospital or office therefore if you had several physicians you frequented you needed to log on to each but an advantage would be if all your physicians belong to one physician group. This would allow for all your doctors to see what each has prescribed or made not of in your charts. Keeping everyone the same page when it comes to your healthcare. One other disadvantage as noted in health news is that small clinics small usually have to absorb all of the start up and training cost involved in using a portal plus the annual usage fee. Smaller clinics couldn’t handle the influx of messages
The information seeking behavior of the clinicians serves to meet the need for relevant and quality information and provides answers to various questions arising in the course of patient care. The introduction of EHR has enabled ubiquitous access to electronic health information. With the advancement in technology, most medical institutions and libraries provide health care providers with access to a wide virtual collection of knowledge-based resources, irrespective of time and location. The authors stress the need for collaborative efforts from academic and industry sectors along with the application of expertise in electronic health/medical records (EHR/EMR) to achieve efficacy in patient care and minimize costs.
Patient portal is a Web-based access point which enables physicians and patients to chat and exchange health details remotely, adds an extra element for the continued handling of the patient's care. Although portals cannot substitute a face-to-face visit, they have got a lot of advantages, these are generally developed to improve patient's involvement in his or her care, portals help monitoring test results as well as health records and can also improve a regular doctor-patient discussion. Moreover, portals are effective in reducing expensive paperwork by functioning as online billing and pay centers.
In its simplest form, the basic concept of a patient portal is that it is a website, that has some form of security embedded into the process, which allows identified users (patients) access to some level of their health information via the Internet. This access is controlled by authentication methods and the information is personal health data that is being hosted and/or managed by the organization (via a database). The amount or level of information that the user has accessed due is strictly set by the organization and access control through software applications that assure authentication, authorization and accountability. In a 2013 article, Gary Hamilton discuss the advantages of patient portals and state that they, “present many workflow efficiencies for providers, offer empowering tools for patient engagement and facilitate meaningful and relevant information excha...
Technology is a driving force in our society. People can now manage their bank accounts, pay bills, and get their news with the click of the mouse. It only makes sense that the health care industry would join in on these web-based initiatives. More and more providers are using online patient portals as a means for communicating with patients and allowing them to have access to important health information. While patient portals are still in their emerging stages, positive results are being reported from patients and healthcare professionals alike. Online patient portals allow more effective communications between patients and their healthcare professionals by developing stronger, more utilized relationships and by creating a way to get information out to patients more efficiently. Through this enhanced communication there will be patients that are more actively engaged in their treatment, have stronger relationships with their healthcare professionals, and in many cases have improved medical conditions.
Advances in technology have influences our society at home, work and in our health care. It all started with online banking, atm cards, and availability of children’s grades online, and buying tickets for social outings. There was nothing electronic about going the doctor’s office. Health care cost has been rising and medical errors resulting in loss of life cried for change. As technologies advanced, the process to reduce medical errors and protect important health care information was evolving. In January 2004, President Bush announced in the State of the Union address the plan to launch an electronic health record (EHR) within the next ten years (American Healthtech, 2012).
In the study, providers offered patients portal access and then entered an electronic order for interested patients. Patients then received instructions for enrolling in the portal and once enrolled, patients were able to carry out various functions, including scheduling appointments and viewing test results. The results showed that White patients were significantly more likely to enroll than black, Latino, Asian patients. Among patients who enrolled in the patient portal, the majority used the patient portal to communicate with their providers. Nearly one third of patients offered portal access did not enroll, including half of the Black participant
For instance, the Mayo Clinic is taking full advantage of modern technology and has jumped the bandwagon of the online marketing strategy. A Facebook page has been created that posts status updates, clinic locations, hours and reviews for all of the clinics. Just another way Mayo Clinic is reaching out too its patients. For this reason, Microsoft and Mayo Clinic have established partnerships which includes free online records of individual health records to their clients. These health records provide health recommendations which are customized on the basis of patients medical conditions and symptoms. Patients are able to manage and collect records on personal health online, on their time. Such partnerships have ensured a wider reach to patients, enhancing effectiveness. As I stated previously, at the Mayo Clinic the patient always comes first. Mayo offers patients and their families concrete and convincing evidence of its strengths and values to help with their health and decision making throughout their road to
The days of paper patient health care records are fast becoming a historic dinosaur. There are over 160 million Americans utilizing the internet for Health information and two-thirds are those are physicians and other health care workers who rely on a SSL or VPN to transmit patient health information (DeTora & Linkon, 2009). In addition, the new age of technological savvy patients want access to their health information, desire real time communication with their providers (i.e. patient portals) by providing virtual communication from scheduling appointments, refill prescriptions, and on-line bill payments. However, HealthCare Professionals must address the issue on how to provide secure access.
Sharing the personal health records with patients has the potential to improve the safety of medication prescribing and trending of physiologic data (e.g. blood pressure, clotting times, blood glucose, and daily weights). Patient portals can serve as personal health records in which health information is preserved over time (Gephart & Effken, 2013). Humana provides great features of patient portal for their members. The patient portal can be viewed on a computer, a smart phone, and a tablet. The members can utilize the portal to order and search medication, find physicians, view existing claims and benefits, and submit requested documents. Using the patient portal makes the members to monitor and manage their health easier than
This paper will take a deeper look into patient portals and mobile health applications, and how their structure and capabilities affect patients within the community. There is a growing interest in electronic
Due to our fragmented healthcare system patients are faced with visiting many different treatment entities. The inability to access information about a patient’s treatment plan makes care complicated to manage for both patients and providers alike. While some healthcare delivery systems have open information exchanges where information is readily available to any service provider within the network the information is not easily shared among those outside its network. Measuring and
Through interoperability, patients have the transparency to view their complete medical records by logging into one structure to observe all consultations, interactions, diagnoses, medical records, and even the option to request an appointment with a physician. For example, in a TED Talks video, “Healthcare Should be a Team Sport” Eric Dishman had a recent kidney transplant, and for his post-op, Eric with previous experience as a medical technician, performed an ultrasound on himself, while his physician watched through a live video (Dishman, 2013). Eric’s physician noticed a black spot on his new kidney (fluid collection), his physician then instructed Eric to take a live picture of his kidney, which was automatically received by all of his physicians (Dishman, 2013). Through Eric’s medical experience, the growth of IT has had many benefits for patients and providers. Technology has made it easier for patients to access care and treatment anywhere through a coordinated “team sport” (Dishman, 2013).
Also, these studies question those who are effected; in this case, those who are most effected, is everyone. Doctors and nurses spend the most time working within these systems, but the information that is put into these systems effects every individual in America, because it is their information. Because nurses are often considered “both coordinators and providers of patient care” and they “attend to the whole patient,” their opinion is highly regarded (Otieno, Toyama, Asonuma, Kanai-Pak, & Naitoh, 2007, p. 210). It is clear that the use of these new systems is much debated, and many people have their own, individualized opinion. This information suggests that when there is a problem in the medical field, those who address it attempt to gather opinions from everyone who is involved before proceeding. It has been proven by multiple studies that this system of record keeping does in fact have potential to significantly improve patient health through efficiency, and it is because of this that the majority of hospitals have already completed, or begun the transfer from paperless to electronic (Otieno, Toyama, Asonuma, Kanai-Pak, & Naitoh,
As I mention in a privacy post privacy and security of patients records is the main reason social media can be an issue in Healthcare facilities. The breach of patients privacy and security are some of the major negative affect that technology has already has on healthcare. Their is a greater possibility that patients information can be hacked or be exposed easily by people (healthcare workers/providers) through technology (social media)
Computers not only aid in the administration and organization of patient records, but in actual health care. The Internet has made a huge impact on the health care system. Health care on the Internet has become diverse and significantly present in the past two to three years. Throughout the years, Internet services for health care evolved. According to (Douglass K., 1997), during the first generation, uses of the Internet have been applications of information that describe products, and services that are available from health care providers. During the second generation, the Internet was used for transactions that involved electronic data exchanges, which includes purchasing prescription drugs. As technology advances, the third generation will involve the use of complex health management programs and the managing of clinical information.