In order to qualify for CMS Meaningful Use Stage 2 incentives, eligible providers need to ensure that at least 5% of their patients use the provider’s “patient portal.” This means that patients must send an online message to their clinician, or patients need to view, download or transmit health information via the portal.
Patient portals are among the emerging technologies in the US health care industry. Like many of you, I communicate with my clinician using “My Chart” or a similar tool. It’s fast and easy to check lab results, ask a question, share information, or make an appointment. I like it, although it took some time getting used to communicating with my health care team in this manner.
In an effort to learn more about how patients want to communicate with their clinicians, the folks at TechnologyAdvice (TA) randomly surveyed 430 patients who had seen their primary care physician within the last year. It’s probably no surprise that a majority of younger patients (18 to 24 years of age) preferred using an online calendar to schedule appointments. Those over age 35 preferred scheduling appointments over the phone, while those in-between found both options equally appealing.
What’s more surprising is that almost half of primary care physicians didn’t follow-up with their patients following an office visit. For those who had a follow-up encounter, less than 10% was through a patient portal. For general communication, patients prefer to be contacted by phone; email is the second choice. The same holds true for receiving lab results or diagnoses.
The survey concluded that “many physicians do not have adequate programs in place to introduce patients to such online resources, and are not engaging their patients post-appointment. By investing more resources and time into such initiatives, physicians will likely be able to raise their patient portal engagement rates, meet Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements, and cultivate greater acceptance of online portals in their patient populations.”