Discussion Case Scenario

Discussion Case Scenario

• Your clinic has a patient portal associated with the electronic medical record that is not well utilized by the patients. Only 10% of patients are signed up and only 5% of those patients are actively using the portal.
• The clinic has a goal of 70% of patients signed up and 50% of those patients actively using the portal.
• The current portal has limited functionality implemented—problem list, allergies, medication list, and lab results.
• The portal has unlimited functionality available.
• Your patient population is very savvy using technology to access information related to their health status and will bring in information from various websites.

Discussion questions

As a provider, you identify that the patient portal is not being used for two reasons: patients do not know you offer a portal, and the portal has only basic functionality.

You have been asked by your information systems department to help improve these numbers; there is no budget or functionality limit. Ideally, how would the portal function and how would you help to improve patients’ knowledge of the availability of the portal?

Design a one-page proposal Word document and identify the functionality to include and a plan for educating your patient population about the availability and usage of the patient portal.