Patients Often Lukewarm about Patient Portals; Problems with Training?

Patient portals are an underused and unappreciated asset available as part of an EHR. I have blogged about them in the past (see:Next Step in Patient Portals: Secure Messaging and Administrative Functions;Publishing Test Results in Patient Portals: Holding a Tiger by the Tail). Below is an excerpt from a recent article suggesting that patient are"fed up" with them (see:GAO finds further proof patients are fed up with portals, EHRs): Despite the fact that close to 90 percent of providers participating in meaningful use offer their patients online access, only about one-third of patients actually log in to see their data, according to the...[GAO]. On the GAO'sWatchBlog, the agency explored some of the reasons for that (see:Online Access to Your Health Record). Part of it has to do with the confusion of keeping tabs on separate portals for different providers....Patients often receive access to a different portal for each provider they visit, and must manage separate login information for each one...The patients we interviewed were frustrated with the amount of time and effort it took to set up these portals, understand each portal ’s user interface, and manage all the different passwords....[M]any patients say the information available to them was incomplete and inconsistent across providers, and were unclear about whether it could be electronically downloaded, transmitted, or aggregated in one place. Those patients who did use online portals s...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Lab Industry Trends Lab Information Lab Regulation Medical Consumerism Quality of Care Source Type: blogs