FROM PLOS MEDICINE
Owners and creators of patient-facing web portals to access individuals’ electronic health records (EHRs) need to improve the portals’ usability, according to researchers from the University of California San Francisco.
The essay is a response to the efficacy of the federal Meaningful Use program, a multibillion-dollar EHR incentive program managed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
So far, the federal government has awarded more than $25 billion to health care clinics and hospitals to “incentivize [them] to implement electronic health records across the United States,” Courtney Lyles, Ph.D., and her colleagues said in a statement. The program covers a number of targets, including patient registration and use of portal websites that are linked to patients’ electronic health records.
The authors acknowledged the program’s success at awarding payments for EHR implementation; 94% of U.S. hospitals and 77% of U.S. office-based health professionals have received implementation payments. But the authors complained that “the lack of usability [of the web portals] is a formidable barrier to achieving widespread use of portals and other patient-facing technology, particularity for diverse groups.”
A study of a racially and ethnically diverse group of 51 older adults, which the authors cited in the essay, suggests that their criticism of the portals is warranted.
According to the study, only 12% of participants who said they would use a portal website after being shown a video were able to correctly complete a set of simple tasks – and none was able to complete a set of complex tasks with the portal ( J. Appl. Gerontol. 2014;33:416-36 ).
The essay’s authors also expressed concern about the challenges faced specifically by non-English speakers and those with limited literacy.
Health care providers and hospital systems should “look to purchase EHRs with patient-facing portal products that meet the basic needs of their population,” the authors suggested. For example, such products should be accessible in the languages best understood by health systems’ patients. The authors also urged EHR/portal programmers and developers to “familiarize themselves with the issues of health literacy and health care disparities.”
Read the full essay in PLoS Medicine (July 14, 2015 [ doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001852]).
klennon@frontlinemedcom.com
