Patient engagement is a major component of Meaningful Use Stage 2. As the first hospitals start fulfilling the requirements to meet Meaningful Use, patients will start to gain control over their healthcare information. One challenge is to educate patients on the various options available to them, how they could access their information and how to use portals to view, download and transmit (VDT) their personal data.
A recent article published in InformationWeek, First Hospitals Achieve Meaningful Use Stage 2, highlights how the Penn Highlands hospital worked with government institutions, affiliated partners and patients to implement MU2. The hospital’s CIO, Tom Johnson, is quoted as saying that the hospital attested with 7-8% VDT, which to him indicated that there wasn’t a high demand for the functionality.
Christina Caraballo, healthcare strategist at Get Real Health, thinks VDT functionality is still new and its true value has not yet been realized. “It is not enough to only provide patients with access to a patient portal with VDT capabilities,” she says. To achieve its full potential, hospitals have to engage and educate patients, since the average patient is unlikely to understand the meaning and capabilities of VDT.
In accordance with the MU2 requirements, Get Real Health’s InstantPHR™ is accompanied by expert knowledge on optimizing the positive effects of patient engagement tool deployment, and advice on ways to increase ROI on hospitals’ Health IT investments. The portal is a market-ready solution for patient engagement and meaningful use, readmissions management, chronic disease management and care transitions.