Question

You are the Director of Clinical Informatics at an academic medical center in the western United States. Part of your role is to oversee the patient portal which is considered part of the outpatient EHR. The center is planning to adopt and integrate a PHR with its EHR. The hospital CEO drafts of vision statement that states, “By using the latest technology, University Hospital will improve how our patients experience Health Care. Instead of patients coming to us for help, we will be there whenever and wherever they need us, asking, ‘How can we help you?’ This initiative will make healthcare easier to access and more convenient to use, improve patients’ health, and reduce the rising cost of healthcare in our area.”

What is your role in engaging populations to understand information about their health and how to access health information resources?

What steps would patients take to correct their data?

What barriers should this facility anticipate and rolling out the PHR, and what tactics should the organization take to overcome them?

Answer 1

Provide opportunities to the patients for using a digitally supported learning health system to better comprehend and combat health disparities.Provide useful support for chronic disease management, aligne EHR data elements with patient priorities, and develop better paradigms for learning from patient data. Focused study is needed to determine whether, and under what circumstances aggregate community-level views, information about “patients like me,” financial incentives, pure altruism, or something else that most motivates individuals to share information in a sustained manner.

Health information is any information about your health or a disability, as well as any other personal information collected while you are receiving a health service. The nurse can contact patient directly for the health information.

Patients that are using a patient portal can send secure messages to their healthcare providers and would be able to update personal health information and demographic information by sending a message via the internet. In ideal PHRs, that are networked data is populated in from all healthcare providers in the network. Patient data could also be automatically updated by the new data from other providers. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has implemented 2 of 4 stages of meaningful use proposed for PHR. Stage 2 require integration of the PHR and electronic healthcare record (EHR) together with the implementation of secure messaging to the HP. Before meaningful use patients were calling the HPs, office and waiting for return calls and spending examination time updated information verbally with the HP. After meaningful use the patient will be able to enter data into their PHR online before they arrive at the HPs office and will have a higher quality visit because time is not wasted discussing updates in the patient’s health history.

The most significant barriers to widespread PHR adoption:lack of awareness about PHRs and their benefits and risks