Why Do Pets Have Better Web Portals For Medical Records Than Humans?

One of the inescapable realities of having children is that it is very likely you will also have pets. And with pets come responsibilities that you naively thought would fall on someone else, such as walking your dog or taking your cat to the veterinarian. Fortunately, to make my life easier, my vet provides access to a health information web portal for my pets, and has done so for some time now. However, it was not until the recent release of proposed revisions to Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that I realized perhaps web portal designers for human electronic health records could learn a thing or two from what I know is already available for pets. CMS currently requires providers to have at least 5 percent of patients viewing, downloading, or transmitting online health information to qualify for financial incentives under Stage 2 Meaningful Use, but this could go down to only one patient under a new rule proposed by CMS in April. Yes, I said “one patient,” and this is happening at a time when fewer than one third of patients are offered access to their medical records through web portals, and fewer than half of those offered access viewed their health information at least once. It almost seems that we have given up on trying to make web portals for electronic health records ubiquitous. A User-Friendly Experience For Owners Of Pets Before attempting to answer the main question in the title, let me describe som...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured Health IT Health Professionals Hospitals Population Health CMS EHRs health technology patients pets Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements web portals Source Type: blogs