Portals

The folks at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC) Consumer eHealth team aren’t about to slow down when it comes to its Blue Button initiative. They recently announced the arrival of Blue Button Plus, which will aim to make the initiative consumer friendly through the implementation of interoperable standards.

In part 1 of this two-part podcast series, Healthcare Informatics Associate Editor Gabriel Perna speaks with Dave deBronkart, better known by his moniker e-Patient Dave, an industry leading expert on the subject of patient engagement. He discusses the upcoming patient engagement-related challenges this year in the industry, while mentioning the problems with a lot of patient portals’ user interface.

Stage 2 of meaningful use raises the bar in terms of how and when hospitals and physician groups must make patient data available.

A new survey from Wolters Kluwer Health, a Philadelphia-based provider of business intelligence services, has found that 80 percent of Americans feel the trend of people being involved with their healthcare from a consumer standpoint is a good and necessary change. Despite positive feelings on this “consumerization” of healthcare, only 19 percent of those people surveyed said they have a personal health record (PHR), and 86 percent admit they have to take a more proactive role in managing their own healthcare.

A recent study conducted by researchers at the Oakland, Calif.-based integrated healthcare organization, Kaiser Permanente, found that users of Kaiser’s personal health record (PHR), My Health Manager, visited their doctor’s office 16 percent than those who weren’t users of it. One of the study’s authors explains why this result shocked him and what it might mean.