Patient Engagement News and Articles

Chronic care access limits diagnosis & quality for women

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It could take more than a year longer for women to get a diagnosis for a chronic disease than it could for their male counterparts, with new survey data showing stark disparities in how women rate...

Patient satisfaction suffers under poor hospital admission & discharge

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Healthcare organizations working on improving the hospital patient experience need to focus on the admission and discharge process, with new J.D. Power survey data showing that patients are frustrated...

Retail health clinic utilization climbed by 202% by 2022

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Retail health clinic utilization soared a whopping 202 percent nationally from 2021 to 2022, signaling the continued care access shift into alternative care sites, according to the FAIR Health...

Digital maternal health tools hold promise, but equity question remains

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Digital maternal health tools could be a key piece of the nation’s overall maternal health improvement plan, but the industry is currently staring down serious usability and cultural competence...

Health equity investment slated to continue into 2024

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Health equity efforts will almost certainly maintain their pace over the next year, as healthcare leaders assert that equitable care and closing of heath disparities is a social, ethical, and political...

Patient portal message responses vary by race, ethnicity

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The doctor is in? For Black patients sending patient portal messages, that might not be true, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open. The analysis of nearly 58,000 patient portal messages sent...

Better change management key to patient self-scheduling buy-in

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Healthcare organizations that have implemented patient self-scheduling technologies have done so with success, but it’s going to require a better change management plan to get the provider and...

Are rising US maternal mortality rates inflated?

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A new study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology is calling into question the high US maternal mortality rate, stating that many of the maternal deaths documented in the...

Using gen AI to translate medical jargon in discharge notes

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Using too much medical jargon in discharge notes may not be conducive to patient engagement, but researchers from NYU Langone are exploring how generative AI can fix that problem. In a new study...

Healthgrades: communication, patient experience sway recommendations

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Hospitals and health systems working to build a better reputation should focus on patient-provider communication, according to Healthgrades, which extrapolated insights about the overall patient...

What are the top patient safety concerns for this year?

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Healthcare’s biggest patient safety threats for this year run the gamut of workforce concerns to patient access to maternal and perinatal care and all the way down to new health IT use, according...

Behavioral healthcare access in community health centers up 40%

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The number of behavioral health visits to community health centers soared by nearly 40 percent between 2018 and 2022, but if these care sites are to continue to meet patient demand, they’ll need...

Out-of-pocket costs for patient portal messages reach $25

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It’s getting increasingly common for healthcare providers to bill for patient portal messages, and it’s leaving some patients on the hook for an out-of-pocket bill, albeit the bill is...

Did COVID-19 Help Close Disparities in Patient Portal Use?

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The COVID-19 pandemic may have increased patient portal use and reduced age- and sex-based utilization disparities, but there are still differences in how often people of certain races and health...

OpenNotes Sets Sights on AI in Healthcare with New OpenNotes Lab

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OpenNotes, the patient advocacy group that’s historically led the charge for better patient data access, is dipping its toes in the AI waters with OpenNotes Labs, an initiative to understand how...

A Third of Americans Say Racism Is a Major Problem in Healthcare

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Although nearly a third of the American public thinks racism in medicine is a major problem, that proportion is actually much lower than the public perception of other sectors, potentially signaling a...

White House Commits to Ending Hunger, Diet-Related Illness by 2030

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The White House kicked off the White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities yesterday, leading industry standouts like Missouri-based health system Ascension and health IT vendor...

Is SNAP the Solution to Healthcare’s Medication Adherence Woes?

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Connecting patients experiencing food insecurity with SNAP benefits could improve medication adherence by as much as nearly 14 percent, according to new data from The Ohio State University. The study,...

Patient Portals & Open Notes Increase Referral Access by Up to 40%

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Does patient portal access make a difference in referral access after a primary care appointment? According to one new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), it...

Racially Diverse ZIP Codes See Disparities in MAT Access

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ZIP codes with more racial and ethnic diversity have markedly fewer buprenorphine prescribers and far lower rates of dispensed buprenorphine prescriptions, according to researchers from the University...