Patient Portal Use during Home Health Care at an Academic Health System.
Julia G Burgdorf, Chanee D Fabius, Mingche M J Wu and 2 others
PMID 38006904WHAT IT FOUND
The patient portal was used in 58% of home health episodes among older adults, mainly to view test results, manage appointments and medications, or message providers.
Use was highest in the first 5 days and last 5 days.
Key findings
01The patient portal was used in 58% of home health episodes.
02Among episodes with portal use, viewing test results (84%), managing existing appointments (77%), managing medications (72%), and messaging providers (55%) were the most common activities.
03Portal use was highest during the first 5 days of an episode and had a slight increase during the last 5 days.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study used records from one academic health system, so other home health agencies may differ. The unit was the 60-day home health episode, not the patient; 8409 episodes came from 4878 people, so some patients contributed more than one episode. The study reported portal use and portal activities, not whether care changed. It did not know whether patients shared portal information with the home health team, or whether they also used phone calls, paper records, or other ways to get information. Family or unpaid caregivers may have used the portal, so logged use may not represent the patient alone. Only patients with 2 or more primary care visits in the system were included, so home health patients without that primary care history are not represented. Because no treatment was assigned, it cannot show that any factor caused portal use.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include a conflicts-of-interest statement. The article is labeled as research support from NIH, extramural.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that portal use bridges home health information gaps. The study recorded portal activity only, not whether patients shared it with the care team, and it did not measure whether care changed.