Most Practices Lack Patient Engagement Tools

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Although patient engagement is a hot topic, few practices have tools beyond basic patient portals.

A Chilmark Research report finds that, although patient engagement is a fast-growing trend, most practices have little technology to encourage engagement beyond basic patient portals.

“Focusing on the clinical applications of engagement technology, this report found that the basic patient portal, often tethered to their electronic health record (EHR), still serves as the foundation for a majority of digital patient interactions,” notes the report’s summary.

Although there are numerous patient engagement technologies, you won’t find them in most doctors’ offices. However, Naveen Rao - the report’s author - said he expects these technologies to catch on within two years.

“I wouldn’t call it a standoff, but it’s kind of like both sides are waiting for the other one to move,” he told MobiHealthNews. “You have these healthcare systems who are basically sticking to a portal and they’re kind of looking to their health IT vendors — who they’re already paying lots of money —  to roll out mobile apps, telemonitoring solutions, and things like that. And the vendors are like, ‘The doctors and the hospitals they tend to want things to get them the meaningful use dollars.’ So it’s like, who’s going to move first to these newer technologies?”

He also says the biggest culprits in this are the EHR vendors, who provide patient portals but not more advanced technology like communication between those portals. “The default is, as one vendor said, you go with the radio that comes with the car,” he said. “You use the patient portal that came with your EHR. It’s free, you paid for it, it checks off meaningful use, you move on.”

“It is clear that patient engagement is taking a backseat to other enterprise priorities, such as defining clinician networks, building analytics capabilities, mastering risk-based contracting, and making other preparations for effective population-based health management.”