Paying Patients To Engage?

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Physicians are offered incentives for meeting standards, is the solution to improving engagement offering patients the same deal

Patient engagement is critical for meeting certain meaningful use (MU) standards, and providers need to figure out the best way to convince patients to take charge of their health. EHRIntelligence writes the solution may come in the form of a financial incentive for patients.

MU requires five percent of patients access their personal health records through an online portal. But as EHRIntelligence asks, why should they? “The reasons have never been made compellingly clear. Portals offer a degree of convenience for patients, but it’s not always enough. You can review lab work and refill prescriptions – as long as you don’t need to call and explain anything. You can change your address and insurance information, but you’ll be asked to confirm any changes again anyway when you come to the office for a visit. Sometimes you can make appointments, but you better be sure you can wait three days for confirmation, otherwise you’ll just be picking up the phone.”

Johanna Epstein, VP, Strategic Services, Culbert Healthcare Solutions wrote in an article for Health IT Outcomes, “In order for healthcare organizations to be successful in this new age of healthcare reform, we must provide our patients with the tools they need to engage. We need to make it easy for the patient to become more interested and involved in their overall health and medical care.”

Financial rewards may or may not be the way, but as Epstein writes, “Patient engagement does not ‘just happen.’ As healthcare providers and managers, we need to be more customer oriented than ever before.” Providers need to be smart about engaging patients, and it only makes sense that what motivates providers also motivates patients.

Whatever the carrot may be, it needs to be deployed soon. According to MedCity News, “Patient engagement is all the rage now days; almost every healthcare facility is implementing or planning to implement some form of a patient portal to meet the needs of meaningful use. Here is the problem, well several problems, with the current patient portals that are in the market today.” They go on to list:

• Patients have no interest: “The portals do not properly incentivize the patient either intellectually (providing enough data to prove useful) or financially. (Both in time and/or value) Patients who are generally healthy have real lives and aren’t interested in fixating on a “health portal” or a “Facebook of Health” every day. Life is busy enough.”
• Doctors have no interest: “It’s not just that patients won’t use it, but doctors don’t either. And many lack the competent support of a team (nurse, admin, etc.) who fill the gap when EMR/Portals are simply something they can’t practically grasp. While all the doctors are supposedly able to see who I saw when and what was done, etc., few, if any, actually do.”
• Systems are cumbersome: “The systems are too cumbersome and too high maintenance. They are not practical and there is no accountability throughout practices that require all doctors actually use it. Also, one of the BIGGEST issues with them is that DOCTORS and PATIENTS alike are not fully vested in their creation, usability, etc. This happens all the time … many projects have doctors on board but it’s in a disconnected way, not effectual.”
• Doctors and staff are forced to use low quality solutions: “Healthcare practices (Hospitals, general practitioners, specialists) do not want to spend the time and money to invest in building better solutions themselves, thus they rely on vendors such as Amazing Charts, EPIC, Cerner, etc. Unfortunately little has have changed for many vendors since their software looks like it was created in 1995.”

Still, the importance of patient portal utilization cannot be underestimated, as EHRIntelligence writes, “The opportunity may ultimately lie with payers, not providers. Just as customers of car insurance companies receive rebates or discounts for safe driving, health insurance payers could help drive engagement by offering some sort of reward, whether it’s a bonus check or loyalty points. Engaged patients are healthier patients, and healthier patients are cheaper ones.”

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