Patient Portals: A Platform For Connecting Communities Of Care

Within the context of healthcare reform and Meaningful Use, connecting patient health data across the care continuum is essential if the industry hopes to achieve the healthcare triumvirate: improve care, increase access and lower costs. While there have been a myriad of initiatives, such as state- sponsored HIEs that have attempted to enable this connection, business model complexities and other issues have led to many of their demise.

We believe, however, that a successful approach rests in having the hospital/health systems market serve as the connectivity hub for bringing patients, care givers and healthcare professionals together in a secure, online environment. Hospitals, by their de facto nature of being the central pivot point for their community’s healthcare services, are the natural data ambassadors and with the right strategy can ascend to a position of sustained leadership in the arena of care community connectivity and patient empowerment.

Currently, patient portals are viewed as a key component to enabling quick, efficient two-way communication between healthcare professionals and patients. Additionally, their design allows for secure data connectivity between care teams for all the obvious care management and outcomes benefits that result from doing so. The challenge, however, is the cost, interoperability and scalability issues that arise in point-to-point integration between independently owned care setting locations and disparate EHR systems that exist in the marketplace.

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