Patient Portals News and Resources for Healthcare

Patient Portal Access, Use Reach 52% of Healthcare Consumers

April 16, 2018 - Patient access to health data is continuously increasing, but there is still more opportunity for medical professionals to encourage better patient engagement with their own health data, according to a new ONC data brief about patient technology use. The data brief used information from the National Cancer Institute’s 2017 Health Information Trends Survey. The ONC researchers looked...

Apple Launches Health Records to Support Patient Data Access

April 03, 2018 by Sara Heath

Apple is getting in on the patient data access game with the launch of Health Records, an iPhone app that allows patients to view their own medical records and share those records with their providers. Health Records, which is an extension of...

Patient, Provider Training Key for Patient Portal Use in Oncology

March 29, 2018 by Sara Heath

Healthcare organizations and medical systems need to create better patient education and provider training when implementing patient portals in oncology units, according to a new study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. Doing...

Biden: Federal Action Needed for Patient Access to Health Data

March 21, 2018 by Sara Heath

Vice President Joe Biden is calling on federal health leaders to identify specific strategies for enforcing better patient access to health data. In an op-ed published this week in Fortune, the former leader of the White House Cancer Moonshot...

Seniors Want Patient Engagement Technology for Care Management

March 14, 2018 by Sara Heath

Fifty-nine percent of senior patients (age 55 and older) have concerns about their healthcare going forward, according to a recent survey conducted by Toluna on behalf of Alignment Healthcare. Patient engagement technology will help seniors connect...

Recapping HIMSS18 Patient Engagement Technology News

March 09, 2018 by Sara Heath

At the HIMSS18 conference, it seems as though all healthcare professionals could talk about was patient engagement. Between industry leaders’ vows to better support patient access to health data to launches of innovative patient engagement...

Patient, Provider Views of Patient Engagement Technology Differ

March 07, 2018 by Sara Heath

Patients, providers, and technology vendors are not on the same page when it comes to patient engagement strategies and technologies, according to a report from KLAS released at this year’s HIMSS conference. The report, obtained via email,...

CMS Initiative Aims to Improve Patient Access to Health Data

March 07, 2018 by Sara Heath

Patient access to health data may become easier for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries as CMS launches several new initiatives aimed at putting patients at the center of their own care through seamless health data access. The initiatives include...

Using NLP to Improve Patient Portal Use, Patient Health Literacy

February 20, 2018 by Sara Heath

Natural language processing (NLP) is a viable solution for patient portal use, a process that is often limited by low patient health literacy. NLP needs to be employed judiciously, with considerations for suboptimal term linking and algorithmic...

Epic Systems MyChart Patient Portal Tops 2018 Best in KLAS List

January 31, 2018 by Sara Heath

Epic Systems MyChart reigns as the top-rated patient portal vendor among healthcare professionals in the newly-released 2018 Best in KLAS rankings. The EHR and patient portal giant has kept its top spot since 2015, consistently averaging...

Can Hospital Patient Portal Use Boost Inpatient Outcomes Measures?

January 02, 2018 by Sara Heath

Patient portals might be better suited for chronic disease management and preventive measures, but that doesn’t mean the healthcare industry should ignore the tool’s potential for inpatient use, according to a group of researchers....

Simpler Medical Language Key for Patient Portal Lab Result Notes

December 27, 2017 by Sara Heath

Systems to simplify medical language in patient portal lab result notes need an overhaul, concluded a study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. These systems, known as natural language processing (NLP), can be effective in...

Patients Accessing Patient Portal Lab Results Need Clinician Notes

December 13, 2017 by Sara Heath

Clinicians need to add lab result interpretations to patient portal notes when patients access their own lab results, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. This will help patients...

Is OurNotes the Next Step for OpenNotes, Patient Data Access?

November 16, 2017 by Sara Heath

Many across the healthcare industry are familiar with OpenNotes, the nationwide movement to grant patient data access to view clinician notes. Now, the researchers behind OpenNotes have developed OurNotes, a similar philosophy that also allows...

OpenNotes, AMIA Partnership to Improve Patient Data Access

November 06, 2017 by Sara Heath

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and OpenNotes have officially joined forces to expand and support patient data access across the country. The partnership, announced at AMIA’s 2017 Annual Symposium, will support OpenNotes’...

How NLP Improves Patient Understanding of Patient Portal Notes

November 03, 2017 by Sara Heath

Natural language processing (NLP) has proven an effective strategy for translating clinical terms into lay-language, thus improving patient understanding of patient portal notes, according to research published in the Journal of Medical Internet...

How Motivation Tactics Spark Meaningful Patient Portal Adoption

October 31, 2017 by Sara Heath

Although most hospitals and providers offer patient portal access, there is still more to be done. Meaningful patient portal adoption is lagging as more providers look to their patient portals asking how to proceed. Ninety-five percent of hospitals...

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