Patient Portals

- Consumer Mediated Exchange provides patients with the autonomy to aggregate and control how their health information is shared between health providers.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) strives to improve the quality of the lives of Americans. The most current healthcare policy that endorses the ACA, is the ObamaCare initiative that has received a fair share of both support and criticism. (Hwang, et al. 2013) talks about the “Effects of the integrated delivery system on cost and quality”. According to the authors, most people criticize the American healthcare system because of its complexity, high cost and excessive fragmentation. The same scholars confirm however that the fragmentation and the provision of various services, benefit different people that require healthcare attention. The article focuses on several advantages of the integrated healthcare delivery systems (IDSs) in the United States. Furthermore, the scholars identify existing gaps, which include the various arguments of current health policy experts that have endeavored to discuss health policy issues in America. Americans can also access health care services through virtual technologies, which allow them to have different electronic health record databases. (Hwang, et al. 2013) uses relevant materials from peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed articles to describe the fluctuating nature of healthcare service delivery in America. Conclusively, the authors agree that the virtual systems create room for accountability, academic research in healthcare and efficient service delivery.

Athenahealth’s mission is “to become caregivers ' most trusted service, helping them do well, doing the right thing.” Athenahealth has been a premier physicians ' advocate for the past 24 years. Their organization works hard so that physicians and healthcare professionals don’t need to be distracted by anything that could pull focus away from their patients. Athenahealth combines groundbreaking, cloud-based software, networked knowledge, and back-office services to meet the many, varied demands of the healthcare field. They are a trustworthy organization that focuses on administrative tasks so that healthcare professionals can deliver more personalized care to their patients. Any

Electronic portals create even more complex regulatory, performance and legal challenges than the common HIPAA guidelines that apply to any covered entity that deals routinely with PHIs. Health care providers often struggle to meet Medicare 's and Medicaid 's "meaningful use" requirements that health providers can only be reimbursed if they engage their patients interactively and electronically while providing security protection and

Healthcare reform has created incentives to increase patient engagement to increase accountability, healthcare outcome and lower healthcare cost. In the early days of this movement, web portals were created with basic functions of requesting appointments, prescription refills, and paying medical bills (Butterfield, 2013). Today, patient portals allow users to access dictated visit reports, labs, approve access controls combined with the function of the web portals. As more health information is pushed to the portals, the users (patients and family) are more involved with healthcare decisions and more knowledgeable on available options that meet individual need.

Changes in current health care practices, the aging baby-boomer population, and the higher acuity of patients has created a need for change and adaptability with the health care industry. Kaiser is an organization who has shown the ability to continuously change in order to reduce costs while improving efficient quality patient care. The investment on information technology (IT) advancements such as the implantation of electronic health records (EHRs) and use of a patient portal system is one way the organization has shown readiness to meet the health care needs of patients. KP in collaboration with five other healthcare organizations created a Care Connectivity Consortium, enabling secure electronic retrieval of current

The author has been employed in the healthcare field for over fifteen years that has allowed the time to observe the transformation of the primary care practice. This paper will examine the industry using Aspirus, Inc. as the reference point; however encompassing an examination of other healthcare institutions. Evidence suggests the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCHM) model, also known as the medical come, of care can offer many benefits, including improved quality in the patient experience and disease management and lower costs to the patient and system because of reduced emergency room visits or hospital admissions. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the challenges and explore what the PCMH model will be like in five years within the primary care setting of a healthcare organization.

The goal in healthcare today is to achieve better patient outcomes. Technology is changing daily that affects how patient care is provided. As the world around us continues to move into a more advanced technology based healthcare system incentives are offered to qualifying healthcare entities, provided they are utilizing approved health information technology (IT) to comply with standards set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). Standards such as meaningful use help ensure with the use of electronic health records (EHR) that patients are receiving quality care (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], n.d.). This paper will define and discuss the importance and implications of meaningful use relating to healthcare. Several key points will be discussed including an overview of meaningful use, analysis, further recommendations and a conclusion.

The purpose of this project was to overview on the effects of health information technology integration (HIT). This report is mainly focused on understanding of health information technology, specifically on use of health information technology as significant use. Scope of this literature review, given the current state of health information functionality 8.

A patient portal is a free online program that offers patients the tools to successfully manage and view their health care record. The Patient Portal offers a simple and convenient way to see and track your progress in one place.

Over the past decade, virtually every major industry invested heavily in computerization. Relative to a decade ago, today more Americans buy airline tickets and check in to flights online, purchase goods on the Web, and even earn degrees online in such disciplines as nursing,1 law,2 and business,3 among others. Yet, despite these advances in our society, the majority of patients are given handwritten medication prescriptions, and very few patients are able to email their physician4 or even schedule an appointment to see a provider without speaking to a live receptionist. Electronic health record (EHR) systems have the potential to transform the health care system from a mostly paper-based industry to one that utilizes clinical

A patient centered medical home (PCMH) could integrate patient care. A patient centered medial home is a team of healthcare providers coming together to improve the health of a specific population. A PCMH is designed to integrate primary care and specialists into improve care coordination, safety and quality.(Stange, et al 2010) A PCMH would also improve physician training and development to provide a commitment to treat the whole patient, rather than just one part.(Stange, et al 2010) Healthcare fragmentation can also be limited through improved communication between providers using e-mail and social media tools such as facebook and twitter.

There is an increase in the use of patient portals among older patients due to the following reasons: ability to manage their chronic illnesses, and the ability to easily communicate with their physician when they are having questions or changes in their healthcare condition. The truth is that many generations of people who are computer literate are getting older now. This makes it easier for them to easily adapt to the introduction of the patient portal. Nevertheless, there are still many older people that are finding it difficult to adapt to these new healthcare tools (Heath, 2016). I think the number of older people using patient portals would continue to increase. The real issue is some older patients complained that they are not aware

Today’s healthcare environment is rapidly changing thanks to advancements in technology, however, care coordination issues and the fragmentation of care are major issues that plagues patients. Traditional patient portals are typically tethered to a single hospital or clinic electronic health record system. This creates the burden of managing several portal accounts for patients who see multiple providers. A community-wide patient engagement solution gives patients a tool to access all medical records, request prescription refills, and communicate with providers across the community, regardless of the providers’ associations. Research has shown that patients desire to have an active role in their healthcare. Empowering patients with the right

One of the core measures requires the EH to provide their patients with the ability to view online/download/transmit (VDT) their summary of care for an encounter. Many times this requires a step outside of the solution or system (i.e. the hospital clinical information system [HCIS]), and integration with some type of portal or HIE. These are items that, up until the recent years, could have been unheard of in not only that small, remote, rural facility, but also many other facilities based on geography and HIT budgets. Interoperability and HIE challenges have made some of these measures more difficult to obtain for institutions of varying sizes and locations, especially with the addition of increased requirements with MU2 EH (2014). MU2 requires not only the same VDT requirements, but adds additional stipulations to the measure mandating that at least 5% of patients VDT their record. This is a very cumbersome measure for even the largest and most high tech facilities. This is a measure that is outside of the control of a facilities software solutions; this is a direct measurement of patient engagement. In essence, a facility is faced with the issue of making a set number of patients log in to a portal/HIE and VDT their summary of care. How do you, as a facility, strategize and market your portal to ensure the engagement of patients? This has truly been one of the harder measures to meet, and