Promoting Patient Engagement in an Electronic Health Record

• Main Author: Bradshaw, Susan R
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2013
• Subjects: Health care management
• ISBN: 9781303390296; 1303390299

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) have identified the adoption of information technology as a crucial factor in improving the nation's health system. As the healthcare industry moves toward patient-centered care, future stages of meaningful use require organizations to engage their patients as participants of their healthcare, including engagement through electronic health records (EHR). An important emerging information technology tool is the EHR with a patient-provider Internet portal. Portals allow patients to view their EHR, receive laboratory test results, and communicate electronically in a secure manner with their providers' offices. The objective of this paper is to postulate and discuss program design elements which can be used by healthcare systems to measure and compare the outcomes of different approaches for introducing online EHR patient-provider engagement portals to patients. In order to structure the project, the modified RE-AIM framework for evaluation of programs aimed at improving health, will be employed. The ultimate goal of the paper is to help healthcare organizations succeed in implementing patient-provider engagement portals, particularly in the initial stages of portal introduction. This study will show examples of applying simple statistical tools to help healthcare organizations decide how to introduce patient-provider portals to diverse patient groups. These tools and ideas can be applied by institutions to better understand the selection, range, and impact of measurements used to evaluate these campaigns.