Government incentive programs and regulations also influenced some health care organizations to implement patient portals. The increase in patient portal implementation is, in part, due to some preliminary evidence that they may improve patient engagement and health outcomes such as medication adherence. They can also enable patient-provider communication using secure messaging, appointments and payment management, and prescription refill requests. Patient portals can provide secure, online access to personal health information such as medication lists, laboratory results, immunizations, allergies, and discharge information. Hospitals and other health care organizations can facilitate patient access to their EMR information through patient portals. The increasing adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) by hospitals presents an opportunity for patients to access their clinical data and actively participate in their care via the EMR. In the outputs category, some but not all studies found patient portals improved patient engagement patients perceived some portal functions as inadequate but others as useful patients and staff thought portals may improve patient care but could cause anxiety in some patients and portals improved patient safety, adherence to medications, and patient-provider communication but had no impact on objective health outcomes. In the processes category, sociodemographic characteristics and medical conditions of patients were predictors of portal use some patients wanted unlimited access to their EMRs, personalized health education, and nonclinical information and patients were keen to use portals for communicating with their health care teams. Several methods were used to train portal users with varying success.
Findings in the inputs category showed wide-ranging portal designs patients’ privacy concerns and lack of encouragement from providers were among portal adoption barriers while information access and patient-provider communication were among facilitators. Nineteen articles had high- to very high-quality, 21 had medium quality, and 18 had low- to very low-quality. The inputs category was addressed by 40 articles, while the processes and outputs categories were addressed by 36 and 46 articles, respectively: 47 articles addressed multiple themes across the three categories, and 11 addressed only a single theme.
The systematic search identified 58 articles for inclusion.
0 kommentar(er)
