There are many reasons that personal health records benefit both the patient and health care provider (Ball et al., 2011). Personal health records (PHR’s) are defined as software applications that patients are able to use to access personal health data and information sharing between parties (Reti et al., 2010). The introduction of PHR’s has had a tremendous impact on how care is delivered. Prescription refills, sharing of laboratory results and tests are easily accessible for patients. With this accessibility comes the requirement of mandating meaningful use to ensure the appropriate use of these technologies that is a benefit to all involved.
Meaningful use incentive program were developed to improve the quality of patient care, ensuring patient privacy, prevent data breaches, medication errors, and fraud risk (Reti et al., 2010). In the first stage many concerns and roll out was not done in an efficient manner, leaving many health care providers scramblin
NURS 8210 Week 9 Personal Health Records Discussion
g to meet the demands of meaningful use without proper support from legislation. Meaningful use 3 in these incentive programs is now implemented but many health care providers are still struggling to meet meaningful use 2 expectations/regulations (Gruessner, 2015). Stage 2 expectations include clinical summaries, patient specific education, safe messaging tools, follow-up care reminders and access to medical records (Gruessner, 2015). I support personal health records and I also see that having specific regulation and legislation a vital component due to the sensitive nature of the data. I do feel that the method of which this legislation has been implemented has been flawed making challenging situations and penalties for good meaning professionals. When developing a portal for patients, having this interactive, efficient, user friendly all result in higher satisfaction rates and users wanting to expand its functionality and sign up (Gruessner, 2015).
References
Ball, M. J., Douglas, J. V., Hinton Walker, P., DuLong, D., Gugerty, B., Hannah, K. J., &
Troseth, M. R. (2011). Nursing informatics: Where technology and caring meet
(4th ed.). London, England: Springer-Verlag.
Gruessner, V. (2015). How to properly implement patient portals for meaningful use.
https://ehrintelligence.com/news/how-to-properly-implement-patient-portals-for-
meaningful-use
Reti, S.R., Feldman, H.J., Ross, S.E., & Safra, C. (2010). Improving personal health
records for patient centered care. Journal of American Medical Informatics
Association, 17(2),192–195, https://doi-
org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1136/jamia.2009.000927
The mandating of FHRs is a controversial subject. There are many patients who are very amenable to mandating these, as they like to feel that they are in control of their health care and want to feel as though they are working as a team with their health care providers. However, there are several issues with EHRs that may be an obstacle to patients. Some noted accessibility challenges are portals that feature small-font, English-only, text-based content that is written at a very high literacy level. In addition, existing portals often employ user interfaces that are complex to navigate and difficult to customize (Lyles et al., 2017). Both the portals provided in the discussion were a bit hard to navigate and became somewhat unwieldy. The portal must be made accessible to all patients in an equitable and in a manner that can be understood.
Lyles et al. (2017) states: A growing amount of literature documents that certain patient subgroups (such as racial/ethnic minority groups and those with lower socioeconomic status) are significantly less likely to use portals—despite strong interest in portal functionality as well as high Internet and computer use rates across demographic groups in the United States. Paradoxically, these patient subgroups represent populations with disproportionately greater medical need. Much of the literature points to factors such as socioeconomic group, literacy, and ethnicity having the most influence on whether the patient can be induced to use a patient portal. Izarry et al. (2015) concludes: Current research has demonstrated that patients’ interest and ability to use patient portals is strongly influenced by personal factors such age, ethnicity, education level, health literacy, health status, and role as a caregiver. Indeed, if a patient is disabled, caring for an elder or a child, access to a patient portal is essential for them. If a patient perceives that their provider endorses the use of a portal and encourages them in a positive way, they might be amicable to adopting the use of one. Conversely, if the provider is indifferent or disinterested, the patient may be hesitant to adopt the use of an EHRs.
As with anything that is digital, there is always a chance of cyberattack that can lead to a breach of the portal and the potential exposure of private information. According to the National Law Review (2019), around 25 million patient records have been breached, eclipsing the number of patient records breached in all of 2018 by over 66%. Health care providers and organizations can enhance the security of a patient portal by enhancing the sign in process. Instead of the traditional username-password entry, a 2-factor authentication or an authentication sent through a mobile device may add an extra layer of protection. Health care organizations are not required to adopt any one cybersecurity framework or authentication method under HIPAA, however increasing cybersecurity and implementing multi factor authentication for access to patient portals certainly helps with compliance under the HIPAA Security Rule (National Law Review, 2019). If robust cybersecurity methods are not implemented, a security breach and leak of private information can embroil a healthcare organization in many legal tangles that could be avoided with a sound, up to date cybersecurity system. The portals explored here in the discussion both do not use a 2-factor authentication.
Patient portals when used are invaluable to both the provider and patient. When the patient feels they are included and are collaborative with their care, the interactions between provider and patient tend to be more positive. Envisioning the patient portal as a dynamic component of the relationship that a provider has with patients can better help to integrate the patient portal into the practice as a whole. This is infinitely better than seeing this as a separate and isolated abyss of information that is not helpful or useful. The value of a patient’s medical information is not only for the provider and patient but can encompass and facilitate research in addition.
References:
Bertoncini, M., Jackson, V. (2019). Is your patient portal secure? Study shows healthcare organizations’ traditional cybersecurity measures are insufficient against today’s attacks. National Law Review, Volume IX, Number 212
Irizarry, T., DeVito Dabbs, A., & Curran, C. R. (2015). Patient Portals and Patient Engagement: A State of the Science Review.Journal of medical Internet research, 17(6), e148.
Lyles, C. R., Fruchterman, J., Youdelman, M., & Schillinger, D. (2017). Legal, Practical, and Ethical Considerations for Making Online Patient Portals Accessible for All. American journal of public health, 107(10), 1608–1611.
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Important information for writing discussion questions and participation
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Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to
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Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.
Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.
I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!
Hi Class,
Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.
Contact me if you have any questions.
Important information on Writing a Discussion Question
- Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
- There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
- Include in-text citations in your response
- Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
- Follow APA-7th edition
- Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor
- A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
- Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
- Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
- Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
- Follow APA 7th edition
- Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
- Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
- Here are some helpful links
- Student paper example
- Citing Sources
- The Writing Center is a great resource