In 2014 most Eligible Providers will begin their quest to further their Meaningful Use of certified EHR technology into the dreaded Stage 2. If providers can raise their numbers to the higher thresholds and meet the additional core objectives, they will continue to get their reimbursement money for proving to CMS that they are using their EHR applications to the best of their abilities, or well enough to meet the measures.
Stage 2 also marks an important milestone in the American Medical industry. Certain core objectives involve the use of a certified patient portal, and within that, it requires a certain percentage of patients to use the portal. Let me say that a different way, if patients don’t use your portal, you won’t get your money.
So, for providers who practice in low-income areas where internet use is non-existent then they are pretty much out of luck unless they can think of some creative ways to get their patients involved. Physicians are notoriously smart individuals, so I would imagine that practices are already coming up with creative ways to involve the patients without making it seem obvious that without participation, the practice will be missing out on thousands of dollars.
Offering gift cards, contests, and incentives for portal use are all great motivators to get patients to log in once to win their prize, but the real challenge will be continuing to keep patients involved and active in the maintenance of their own health through the portal, which is the true goal and reason for its inclusion in the Meaningful Use program. A perfectly healthy individual is probably not going to continue to log in if their only doctor visits are a once-a-year physical.
I know that I am the exception to just about every “regular person” rule when it comes to excitement about these things: I have an on-going condition and I work in the industry, so I cannot properly gauge how willing people will be to establish yet another username and password to log in to a portal that is greatly irrelevant to their daily lives, but my guess is that enthusiasm is low. Not to mention the fact that as more and more of my providers go live, I will have to create more and more patient portal logins.
The question I have been trying to answer, is how to build excitement levels and make a patient portal relevant to a healthy twenty-something. The answer is right in front of me, and if you are under the age of 40 it is probably on your phone, tablet device and favorites in your web browser: Facebook.
Facebook in its inception was wildly popular with young people because it was a site where you could keep tabs on friends from high school while connecting with new friends at college. Without Facebook, I could not even tell you how many people would have been lost to me. Now, I am not saying that patient portals need to be like Facebook where we endlessly comment on mundane daily tasks and smear baby pictures all over our walls, but the point I am trying to make is that the patient portal should be centered around the patient, not a business driver that stems from a government incentive program.
Facebook is a social media site, and patient portals are primarily concerned with securing a patient’s information and ensuring that it is not accessible to anyone outside of the practice or network. I am sure that someone much smarter than myself is coming up with a way to make patient portals relevant, and I am really excited to get involved when it does come out. So keep an eye on this issue, it may become a pretty big deal.
Collegeville, PA 19426