The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics implemented an online patient portal for seven of its departments in July 2010. To date, 35 percent of the patients have accessed their medical information through the portal.
According to the Des Moines Register, of the patients who accessed their records, almost half viewed test results, 12 percent scheduled appointments and 11 percent messaged their physician or nurse.
That's a high adoption rate achieved very quickly. It will be interesting to find out when the health system achieves nearly 100 percent adoption.
A few lessons can be learned, but the article didn't ask the questions to provide the answers. First question: How did the health system market the portal to its patients and how much marketing did it do? What are the demographics of the patient population? What are the demographics of the 35 percent of patients who accessed their medical information?
Getting these bits of information can help other health systems and large physician groups develop their patient adoption strategy.
There has been a lot of criticism that EHRs demand more work from clinicians in terms of data input. While there's no argument to be had in that area, interestingly, physicians at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics are reporting fewer calls from patients, which translates to less time spent on administrative tasks.
Photo by Stephen Cummings courtesy of Creative Commons license.
