The meaningful use of patient-facing e-health applications has great potential to improve the quality and efficiency of health and health care. Particularly for people with chronic conditions, research demonstrates that patient activation, chronic care self-management, and shared decision making with their clinicians can have a substantial impact on effectively managing their health.
The California HealthCare Foundation released new consumer survey data this week which confirms and complements a variety of other research findings. Americans who have electronic access to personal health information know more about their health, ask more questions of their clinicians, and take better care of themselves.
That’s part of why the Health Information Technology Policy Committee (HITPC) that advises ONC recommended patient/family engagement as one of the five health outcome priorities for meaningful use (MU) of EHRs. And CMS included several relevant objectives in the proposed MU rule it released in January (comments from more than 2,000 organizations and individuals are currently being reviewed by CMS and ONC):
- Consumers’ timely copy of, and access to, electronic records
- After-care summary for each outpatient encounter
- Discharge summary for each hospital stay
- Patient reminders for preventive & follow-up care
The HITPC’s MU Workgroup will be holding a series of public hearings over the next several months to inform its recommendations for Stages 2 and 3 MU definitions. The first of these hearings focuses specifically on the patient/family engagement domain and will be held April 20.
In addition to the formal hearing, ONC and the MU Workgroup strongly encourage input from the public on this blog regarding the evolution of MU objectives to drive better patient and family engagement. In the coming days, some of the panelists who will testify on April 20 will post blog entries on this site as well.
We really want to know more about the meaningful use of HIT in the real lives of patients and families. We will explore how patient-generated data can be incorporated into the meaningful use of EHRs. We also need to address the policy challenges and infrastructure required to support patients’ and families’ meaningful use of HIT. This information will help us to develop a long-term framework for the evolution of HIT applications to facilitate patient and family engagement.
Your input on the same questions we’ve asked the panelists to answer would be most helpful to our efforts, although all comments are welcome. The full list of questions follows.
Panel 1: Meaningful Use of HIT in the Real Lives of Patients & Families
a. What are consumers’ health information needs in the context of their real lives?
b. How do results of ethnographic studies of individuals with chronic health conditions inform our understanding of how HIT can improve their use of health information and connectivity with their providers to improve their health?
c. What is the evidence base for patient benefit from their direct use of PHRs and other HIT that interacts with EHRs?
d. What is the role of mobile applications in improving health of individuals? Is there a specific role for underserved populations?
e. How can we use HIT to make information and knowledge actionable for patients?
f. How does HIT enhance collaboration between patients and their providers and change how the patient’s health is managed?
Panel 2: Incorporating Patient-Generated Data in Meaningful Use of HIT
a. What is the role of patient-generated data in improving health of individuals? What is the evidence?
b. How can patient-reported data be integrated into EHRs and the clinicians’ workflow to improve care management?
c. How can future conceptions of personal health information platforms and information tools facilitate patient-centered care, including transparency, coordinated care, patient activation, while protecting patient privacy?
d. What is the role of the patient in ensuring data in EHRs is accurate?
e. What are your recommendations for meaningful use criteria for 2013 and 2015 that are achievable by a broad spectrum of providers?
Panel 3: Policy Challenges & Infrastructure Requirements to Facilitate Patient/Consumers’ Meaningful Use of HIT
a. What is required for vendors to be able to export data from EHRs in such a way that consumers and patients can use the data in meaningfully?
b. What is the role of providers in making data available to patients in a meaningful way?
c. What are the meaningful uses of that data once exported? What evidence of measureable benefits exist?
d. What are the privacy and trust issues that might affect this from happening?
–Joshua Seidman PhD
I know I will try to attend the public hearings to hear about this. People need better access to their data and I’m interested in how they plan to implement this.
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