Facilitating Organizational Change to Accommodate an Inpatient Portal

Improving Provisioning of an Inpatient Portal: Perspectives from Nursing Staff

BACKGROUND

 Inpatient portals are recognized to provide benefits for both patients and providers, yet the process of provisioning tablets to patients by staff has been difficult for many hospitals.

OBJECTIVE

 Our study aimed to identify and describe practices important for provisioning an inpatient portal from the perspectives of nursing staff and provide insight to enable hospitals to address challenges related to provisioning workflow for the inpatient portal accessible on a tablet.

METHODS

 Qualitative interviews were conducted with 210 nursing staff members across 26 inpatient units in six hospitals within The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (OSUWMC) following the introduction of tablets providing access to an inpatient portal, MyChart Bedside (MCB). Interviews asked questions focused on nursing staffs' experiences relative to MCB tablet provisioning. Verbatim interview transcripts were coded using thematic analysis to identify factors associated with tablet provisioning. Unit provisioning performance was established using data stored in the OSUWMC electronic health record about provisioning status. Provisioning rates were divided into tertiles to create three levels of provisioning performance: (1) higher; (2) average; and (3) lower.

RESULTS

 Three themes emerged as critical strategies contributing to MCB tablet provisioning success on higher-performing units: (1) establishing a feasible process for MCB provisioning; (2) having persistent unit-level MCB tablet champions; and (3) having unit managers actively promote MCB tablets. These strategies were described differently by staff from the higher-performing units when compared with characterizations of the provisioning process by staff from lower-performing units.

CONCLUSION

 As inpatient portals are recognized as a powerful tool that can increase patients' access to information and enhance their care experience, implementing the strategies we identified may help hospitals' efforts to improve provisioning and increase their patients' engagement in their health care.

Analysis of Employee Patient Portal Use and Electronic Health Record Access at an Academic Medical Center

BACKGROUND

Patient portals provide patients and their caregivers online access to limited health results. Health care employees with electronic health record (EHR) access may be able to view their health information not available in the patient portal by looking in the EHR.

OBJECTIVE

In this study, we examine how employees use the patient portal when they also have access to the tethered EHR.

METHODS

We obtained patient portal and EHR usage logs corresponding to all employees who viewed their health data at our institution between January 1, 2013 and November 1, 2017. We formed three cohorts based on the systems that employees used to view their health data: employees who used the patient portal only, employees who viewed health data in the EHR only, and employees who used both systems. We compared system accesses and usage patterns for each employee cohort.

RESULTS

During the study period, 35,172 employees accessed the EHR as part of patients' treatment and 28,631 employees accessed their health data: 25,193 of them used the patient portal and 13,318 accessed their clinical data in EHR. All employees who accessed their records in the EHR viewed their clinical notes at least once. Among EHR accesses, clinical note accesses comprised more than 42% of all EHR accesses. Provider messaging and appointment scheduling were the most commonly used functions in the patient portal. Employees who had access to their health data in both systems were more likely to engage with providers through portal messages.

CONCLUSION

Employees at a large medical center accessed clinical notes in the EHR to obtain information about their health. Employees also viewed other health data not readily available in the patient portal.