Connecting patients directly to the EHR achieves better demographics capture — a cornerstone of Stage 2 Meaningful Use — and lays the foundation for engaging patients and families, which is a key objective for all stages of the EHR Incentive Programs.
The drive for meaningful use attestation has pushed health systems toward patching together disparate patient-facing applications around the provider legacy systems. However, the answer to meaningful use and the future of patient and family engagement strategies are not going to be solved by a patchwork of provider-centric applications. Instead, it will be through implementing a singular patient-centric interface that integrates directly with all provider systems and achieves key objectives for meaningful Use and patient experience initiatives.
Such an approach is part of the movement toward patient-centric systems rather than point solutions that add to the complex web of the existing healthcare/health IT environment. Preliminary studies have already shown benefits to the patient, including a seamless patient experience, increased patient satisfaction, and improved information accuracy. The outcome of having better demographics data, of course, is cost savings and efficiency for the health system.
Giving patients ready access to update their personal information stored in their provider’s EHR not only helps satisfy the meaningful use measure to record patient demographics but also gives patients the opportunity to verify their insurance information as well as ensures that they’re receiving important health information.
Benefits of EHR patient access in practice
At Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH), an estimated 25 to 50 percent of patients have changes in contact, demographics, or insurance information. By simply prompting patients via email to update their insurance information, NMH discovered that nearly one-fifth of patients logged in to access their personal information through a patient-centric platform. Of those patients, 25 percent updated their contact information and 15 percent updated their insurance information.
Needless to say, this activity has added benefits. NMH staff spends up to 12 minutes per patient updating patient information manually. Using a patient-centric platform, patients make the changes themselves in less than 10 minutes and their updates are imported directly into their provider’s EHR. If time is money, the fiscal implication for a patient engagement strategy founded on a patient-centric application is enormous.
Beyond the bottom line, there is also a link between patient and family engagement and increases in patient satisfaction. In fact, after implementing a patient-centric platform, one hospital in Illinois experienced a 6-percent increase in Press Ganey scores. Statistics are proving that patients are sending up cheers to have the chance to interact with their own information through one secure, connected application.
Why mobile matters for patient engagement
To create a truly seamless patient experience, however, the delivery mechanism cannot be ignored. As with any consumer-focused industry, mobile matters. The patient platform should be accessible using both mobile devices and tablets. This is important for two primary reasons.
First, mobile internet usage is expected to overtake desktop usage by next year. More than 40 percent of travelers use smartphones to check in for flights and nearly 21 percent of mobile phone users reported that they used mobile banking in 2012. Patients are no exception to this trend. Current usage statistics at NMH indicate that 19 percent of patient portal visits were made via mobile devices.
Second, it’s important for the platform to be accessible via mobile devices because it truly creates a seamless patient experience. The platform remembers each patient touch-point as a continuous interaction, and what a patient enters via preregistration on a mobile phone is stored for the patient’s next encounter with that platform on a point-of-service kiosk. This approach means greater continuity, fewer repetitious questions, faster check-ins, less frustration, and ultimately better data.
In the drive toward achieving meaningful use, it’s important to consider the patient. Patient-centric platforms may be the solution for more than patient and family engagement objectives — they have potential to revolutionize the patient experience, improve patient satisfaction, and improve data accuracy, which when combined can lead to cost savings and efficiency for health systems. An integrated patient-centric platform indicates a win-win for both patient and provider.
Ben Bau is VP and General Manager of Patient Self-Service Solutions at Vecna where he oversees software development at Vecna. His responsibilities include providing technical direction and guidance for all product development, ensuring that clients are benefitting from the latest technology advances and overseeing the quality of all Vecna software products and services. Ben has led numerous large software engineering projects for both commercial and government clients and is a graduate of MIT. Source
