Behind the Scenes of Epic’s User-Centered Patient Portal Redesign

January 04, 2021 - Healthcare organizations might be seeing their Epic Systems patient portals looking a little different these days. After a two-year process, the EHR vendor giant has unveiled an updated patient portal that Epic said prioritized patient-centered design and usability.

“What we learned over the years of watching patients use MyChart and then directly communicating with our patient and family advisory council, connecting directly with advisory groups at our customer site was that, as we added more and more tools to MyChart, actually it got a little bit harder for patients to navigate,” Sean Bina, VP of Access and Patient Experience at Epic, told PatientEngagementHIT.

That finding isn’t exactly surprising. Patient engagement trends seen across numerous patient portal vendors suggest patients want a tool that helps them easily manage their health. Patients want to see all of their data in one place, be able to make decisions about their care, and complete other health-related tasks all in one centralized location.

That’s a far cry from the patient portals of the 2000s and 2010s, when most vendors were working on simply letting patients take a glimpse at their EHRs. These portals aren’t just about patient data access anymore, but rather they are about being able to take action with that data.

Epic said its redesign is meeting that moment.

Each MyChart patient portal is customized to the user’s health needs, Bina explained. The most important health information—which is going to vary depending on who that user is—surfaces to the top of the patient portal interface. As the patient scrolls down, she sees secondary information and eventually gets to see alerts for any family members she may have tethered to her portal, like an older parent or a child.

That opening alert is the crux of the patient portal wellness efforts. For a middle-aged man newly diagnosed with diabetes, the alert might walk him through how to check his blood sugars.

For a young, expecting pregnant woman, that alert is going to look a little different. It might give updates about what her baby might look like—“your baby is now the size of a banana”—or give her mindfulness exercises that reduce stress and make for a less complicated pregnancy.

As the patient scrolls further, she sees other notifications. That patient might have a balance due. With a series of clicks, she can pay off that balance or apply for a payment plan if her provider offers that. The patient can see if a new appointment time has opened up, one that might be more convenient than the one she previously had booked.

And as mentioned above, patients can use their single patient portal log-in to manage all of these same tasks for any family members for whom they manage care, like an older parent or a child. Patients can also link disparate patient portals from different Epic-using providers—like a dermatologist and a primary care provider—into a singular location.

Bina added that Epic included how-to videos helping patients navigate the portal and capitalize on the new functionalities. All of these updates are available to providers who have the most recently updated version of their Epic suite, the company said, and thus far 175 have made those updates.

At the center of these efforts is user-centered design and a commitment to improving patient engagement and wellness, Bina said.

“We wanted to take a completely fresh look at how we could create a better overall experience for patients as they care for themselves and their loved ones through the system,” Bina explained. “And at the same time we wanted to make it so that it looked the same and worked the same across every platform.”

That end product was made possible by deep market research and connections with both patient users and provider clients, said Trevor Berceau, an Epic product development lead.

“That was a long process, a lot of outreach at different points along the way,” he recalled. “It really started just with what we were hearing from patients themselves in terms of what was working well, what was more challenging.”

Epic also tapped its patient and family advisory council, talked to provider customers, and went into clinics that use Epic to talk to patients about what they need from their patient portals.

Again, the overwhelming consensus was that patients wanted the patient portal to be simple and navigable.

“The concept of being able to log in and at first glance see all of those things that are important to me was one of the things that came out of that initial research,” Berceau stated. “And then as we started putting together early prototypes, early designs, we did a lot of iteration. We brought it to patients. We brought it to our customers. We reviewed it directly with the patient-family advisory councils and did a lot of rapid iteration.”

Again, this overhaul comes as Epic recognizes changing tends in the patient portal and patient data access realm. Early versions of patient portals sought to accomplish one thing: give patients access to their own medical data. That would help empower the patient, conventional wisdom said, and would let providers adhere to meaningful use requirements.

Through the years, most patient portal vendors started adding on other functions, like online appointment scheduling and digital prescription refill requests. Many patient portals, including MyChart, are now able to incorporate patient-generated health data gleaned from patients’ remote monitoring devices and apps.

This redesign is taking all of these newer functions into account, centralizing them, and making them navigable, Bina said. Patients no longer use the portal simply to view their lab results or a reflection of their EHR; they are able to use the patient portal as a central care management point.

“Not only can we help make sure that patients can make it to each of their appointments on time, but also remind them about those important things for managing their health and keeping patients connected and healthy,” Berceau added.

This type of hands-on experience will be especially important for patients managing chronic illness. The technology puts care management and patient education right at the top of the patient portal, helping the patient to better understand their condition.

“It really highlights that personalized aspect of again, getting back to what we've heard from patients, they want to see what's relevant to them when they log in, make that front page, make the first thing they see what's going to be most important for them at this point in time,” Berceau concluded.