Increasing Patient Portal Activation in a Pediatric Subspecialty Clinic

Abstract

Background:Online patient portals are not widely used, despite their advantages for efficient communication, especially for patients with chronic conditions. A hospital-based group practice of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatricians initiated this quality improvement (QI) project with a goal to increase the percentage of patients with an active MyChart (Epic Systems Corporation’s patient portal) account and ultimately improve efficiency of communication between families and clinical staff.Methods:Using QI methodology, we identified staff commitment, workflow issues, and family awareness as gaps and implemented progressive Plan, Do, Study, Act cycles aimed at developing standard processes for activating families on MyChart. We tracked our project measures with statistical process control methodology and sustained our progress with improving awareness and regular feedback.Results:Patient portal activations increased from 1.8% to 30% in a 6-month time period. Highly successful interventions included development and implementation of a standard process for activation, staff education to ensure comfort and commitment, having families opt out instead of opt in, and completed activation of accounts before families leaving clinic.Conclusions:Patient portal activation can be significantly increased through systematic application of QI methodology to address staff training and workflow in a busy subspecialty clinic. Engagement of operations staff and completion of the activation process while the family is still in clinic seemed to be effective in getting families activated in MyChart. It is possible to improve patient portal activation with minimal impact to workflow.

Rapid Implementation of Remote Online Patient Portal Activation in a Children's Hospital during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Pediatric online portal enrollment studies have focused mostly on ambulatory settings with activation rates between 30 and 38%. 15,16 A brief report by Patel et al did demonstrate a 10-fold increase in patient portal enrollment in ambulatory clinics when remote enrollment process was implemented. 17 One of the higher pediatric patient portal enrollment rates was reported by Ramsey et al with a rate of 87.5%; however, the study was done in an adolescent ambulatory setting, which was not comparable to our study due to the significant difference in population and setting.…”

Real-Time Patient Portal Use Among Emergency Department Patients: An Open Results Study

“…Opt-out models have been shown to increase portal enrollment but may increase costs due to EHR licensing fees, which are usually based on the number of enrolled users. 10 Despite our site's opt-in model, clinicians, nurses, and registration staff can easily send patients portal enrollment tokens via text message, email, or the after visit summary (AVS). The EHR-based workflows for sending tokens are accessible with a single click from Epic's Storyboardan at-a-glance summarization tool visible from most Epic workflows.…”

Patient portals for the adolescent and young adult population: Benefits, risks and guidance for use

“… 22 Strategies such as dedicated staff to educate adolescent and young adults have been shown to improve enrollment especially when activation is completed when the patient is still in the clinic. 23 , 24 Use of the portal amongst parents of children with chronic disease reduces over time with only 15.9% in one study continuing to use the portal 3-6 months after enrollment. 25 …”