Efforts of HHS to increase patient engagement with EHRs fall short, GAO reports

Brief:

1. A latest report claims that sufferers aren’t accessing and using their electronic health information, despite wide availability to do so, and calls on HHS to reassess the effectiveness of efforts to enhance patient engagement with EHRs.


2. In accordance to the General Accountability Office report, just about one-third of sufferers accessed EHRs through physician practices. The amount of use among hospital patients was less than half that at 15 percent, despite 88 percent of hospitals providing access.


3. HHS has injected more than $35 billion into health information technology, primarily intended to increase the adoption of EHRs among caregivers.

Description:

Much of the federal push to enhance patient engagement with EHRs has fallen to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and CMS through programs such as Patient Engagement Playbook and the Medicare EHR Incentive Program. Although, neither agency has effective means of measuring the outcomes of their attempts to see if patients are really accessing and using their EHRs.

“While HHS’s investment in health IT is important, HHS lacks the capability to determine whether, or to what extent, CMS’s and ONC’s efforts are assisting HHS to achieve its goals,” the report summarizes. GAO suggested that HHS develop performance measures to assess its attempts to enhance patients’ access to longitudinal health information and use the data to achieve program goals.

Despite an industry-wide push to enhance patients’ use of their personal health data, little progress has been made — in part because of the deficiency of interest from patients, but also in part because providers haven’t actively promoted PHIs and patient portals.

In accordance to a recent West survey, 75 percent of patients with chronic conditions need their provider to check in regularly so they can be alerted if anything seems unusual, though only 30 percent report getting such feedback. Such information could be beneficial in tracking a health of patient between visits and better inform the doctor when the patient schedules their next visit.

Providers are aware of the need improve EHR access. In a survey by CDW Healthcare, 71 percent of providers said improving patient engagement is a top priority and 80 percent said they were working to make EHRs simpler for patients to access.