Using Health IT to Improve the Health Care Experience

A medical record is a collection of information about an individual’s health condition and the health care they receive.

Individuals can use health IT to take control of their health by accessing their medical record electronically. Eight in 10 individuals who accessed their medical record online considered the information useful!

Get started today using the steps below:

• Looking for a new health care provider? Ask if he or she has an EHR—you are likely to get more coordinated care.
• Ask for instruction to access your records online through a patient portal and signup for access.
• Log in to the patient portal and check to make sure your information is correct. Your health record should include the following information:
  • Doctor’s name and number
  • Your personal information
  • Medications
  • Tests
  • Health reminders
  • Health summaries (allergies, immunizations, diagnoses)
  • Notes for any care plans
• Know that you have the right to add missing information or correct errors.
• If you have multiple providers with different portals, download your records and set up your own personal health record. Compiling your health records means you can better manage health goals.

Source: ONC, Health IT: Advancing America's Health Care (PDF)

Additional Resources:

• DHS Provider Search and MyHealthWI. These tools can help you find the right doctors in your area. MyHealthWI also offers information and resources to help you play an active role in your care.
• ONC: The Guide to Getting & Using Your Health Records

One interesting issue about patient portal access is that patients often report not enrolling because they lack information or motivation or question the value.

Providers will be interested to know that when patients actually use portals, they are 2.6 times more likely to choose to stay a patient of a practice. Clearly, it is in the best interest of both patients and practices to increase portal access and use.

So how do you create change? Evidence shows patients are more likely to access their portal when clinicians and staff incorporate touch points in workflows to demonstrate and discuss the value of portal use.

Statistics point to in-office registration as the most effective opportunity to enroll patients and have them sign-in to their records. Best practices from the field suggest the most effective strategies include getting all clinicians and staff to buy in to using every office visit to promote the value of your patient portal and nudging patients to make follow-up appointments, stay on top of recommended screenings, or request refills online.

We encourage you to tailor this approach for getting patients enrolled in—and using—patient portals to fit your practice.

Source: ONC, Patient Engagement Playbook

Additional Resources:

• ONC, What is a Patient Portal?
• ONC, How to Optimize Patient Portals for Patient Engagement and Meet Meaningful Use Requirements (PDF)
• ONC, Patient Engagement Strategies for Providers (PDF)

Most practices have patient portals that have great features to help individuals address information gaps and manage their health.

Join others who have accessed their medical records online and found it useful.

• Almost 75 percent used online records to help monitor their health.
• Over a third have downloaded or shared their health information with someone else, such as a provider or caregiver.

Save time and get the information you need when and where you need it by using these suggestions to access the full power of your patient portal:

• Next time you get a prescription, ask your health care provider if he or she uses electronic prescribing—it makes your life easier. This feature may also be used request refills.
• Next time you get a test, ask your health care provider if he or she can share lab results online—it can make getting results faster, and they can be read in context with your provider’s notes.
• At your next health care visit, ask your provider to have a summary of the office visit with related educational materials sent to you electronically and securely to help you keep track of your information.
• The next time you have a change in your health condition, share your records with other providers or family members.
• Schedule appointments and review and pay bills.

Source: ONC, Health Information Technology Factsheet (PDF)

Additional Resources:

• ONC, Answers to Common Health IT Questions for Individuals

Online access to health information can be an effective tool for saving your practice time and resources, as well as meeting patient needs.

Individuals report retrieving their health information online to address information gaps and manage their health. Over a third of individuals have downloaded or shared their health information with someone else, such as a provider or caregiver, in the past year.

The outcome of empowering health care consumers with online access to health information is engaged patients and better coordinated care.

A best practice is to enable functionality that allows patients to do the following tasks electronically:

• Refill prescriptions
• Access lab results with contextualized patient education resources
• Handle administrative tasks, like booking appointments
• Support electronic records requests to better manage care
• Aggregate data from multiple sources using application program interfaces (APIs)

Source: ONC, Patient Engagement Playbook

Additional Resources:

• ONC, Expanding Electronic Health Information Access and Exchange (PDF)
• ONC, Health IT Playbook, Section 4.3. Visit this site to learn more about telehealth.

Importantly, health IT can be used as a tool to remove barriers to patient-provider communication between visits.

• Use secure electronic messaging to ask a question about a provider’s instructions or a medication.
• Read your provider’s shared notes online to contextualize lab results or understand her guidance on a medication in more detail.

Secure messaging and shared notes are two patient portal features you can use to stay engaged in your care and make care coordination and communication more convenient, efficient, and effective.

By using secure messaging to connect with your health care provider and reading notes available in your patient portal, you can work with your provider between visits to give needed attention to routine health issues, better monitor conditions with educational resources, or improve a transition of care to a specialist.

Here are some important steps:

• Ask your provider if he or she can be contacted with secure messaging. If so, ask him or her if there are any resources for learning how to best use the feature and what to expect when using it.
• Ask your provider if he or she will integrate shared notes into you care summary or lab results. If so, try to learn what to expect to see in the notes.

Source: ONC, Patient Engagement Playbook

Additional Resources:
ONC, Maintain Your Medical Record

Importantly, health IT can be used as a tool to remove barriers to patient-provider communication between visits.

• Patients may have questions about a provider’s instructions or a medication.
• Providers may need to share their notes to contextualize lab results or simply explain their guidance in more detail.

By enabling secure messaging and online notes, practices help patients and providers work together to call attention to routine health issues, better monitor conditions with educational resources, and improve a transition of care to a specialist.

• Best practices promote enabling secure messages and using shared notes to improve and streamline patient-provider communication and workflow.
• Secure messaging can reduce time-consuming phone calls (and the need for some face-to-face visits) by giving patients and providers a quick, convenient way to exchange information.
• When practices integrate email into their workflow, providers often find communicating with patients more convenient and less time consuming.
• Explain to patients what they can expect to see in the notes, and keep the notes focused on one topic—such as promoting medication adherence or improving patients' understanding of their health conditions.
• Reference educational materials whenever possible.

Source: ONC, Patient Engagement Playbook

Additional Resource:
ONC, Secure Electronic Messaging Factsheet (PDF)

What is telehealth and mHealth?

Telehealth: Technology-enabled health and care management and delivery systems that extend capacity and access

Mobile health (mHealth): Consumer medical and health information that includes the use of the internet and wireless devices for consumers to obtain specialized health information and engage in online discussion groups to provide peer-to-peer support

What are the benefits of telehealth?

Improved access: Since its inception, telehealth has been used to bring health care services to consumers in distant locations. Telehealth not only improves consumer access, it extends the geographic reach and expertise of physicians and health facilities. Given provider shortages around the world, telehealth has a unique and appealing value proposition. It can provide millions of people in both rural and urban areas access to safe, effective, and appropriate care when and where they need it.

Cost efficiencies: Reducing or containing the cost of health care is one of the strongest motivators to fund and adopt virtual care technologies. Telehealth reduces the cost of health care and increases efficiency with better management of chronic diseases, shared health professional staffing, reduced travel times, and fewer or shorter hospital stays.

Improved quality: Studies have consistently shown that the quality of health care services delivered via telehealth are as good as those given in traditional in-person consultations. In some specialties, particularly in mental health and ICU care, telehealth delivers a superior product, with greater outcomes and consumer satisfaction.

Consumer demand: The greatest impact of telehealth is on consumers, their family, and their community. Using telehealth technologies reduces travel time and related stresses for the consumer. Over the past 15 years, multiple studies have documented consumer satisfaction and support for telehealth services. Such services offer consumers the access to providers that might not be available otherwise, as well as medical services without the need to travel long distances.

Source: American Telemedicine Association, Telehealth Basics

Health IT is transforming the ability of practices to remotely deliver health care services and collect accurate, reliable patient data without solely relying on self-reported information collected during a face-to-face office visit.

Traditionally, practices have been limited to using information generated in an office visit—forgoing remote delivery of care and rich sources of nonclinical data on patients’ health and well-being generated outside of the patient encounter.

Practices can now take advantage of telehealth and patient-generated health data to fill information gaps and improve clinical decision-making, care access and delivery, and health outcomes.

Using digital, networked technologies like mobile phones and computers, providers can conduct cost-effective e-visits with patients and gather patient-generated health data. Data that can be gathered include:

• Health and treatment histories.
• Biometric data, like blood pressure readings.
• Lifestyle choices, like diet and exercise habits.
• Real-time symptoms.

Many practices are actively addressing the patient demand for telehealth, which has been shown to improve the patient experience, and using insights from patient-generated health data to:

• Start a discussion about tracking a patient’s health between visits by illustrating a behavior over time.
• Predict hospital readmission risk and plan an intervention for preventive care and chronic disease management.
• Improve patient safety by providing insight into medication adherence and allergies.

Source: ONC, Patient Engagement Playbook

Additional Resources:

• ONC, Health IT Playbook, Section 4.3
• ONC, Assessing Patient Experience with Care Factsheet (PDF)
• ONC, Patient-Generated Health Data (PDF)