PATIENT PORTALS
Half of older adults don’t use their health provider’s secure patient communication site
These days, Americans can manage many facets of their lives through the internet. But a new poll suggests that many older adults still aren’t using online systems to communicate with the doctors and other healthcare providers they rely on—despite the widespread availability of such systems.
Only about half of people aged 50 to 80 have set up an account on a secure online access site, or “patient portal,” offered by their healthcare provider, according to the new findings from the National Poll on Healthy Aging.
Older people with more education and higher household incomes had higher rates of patient portal use—even though those with lower household incomes and less education in general have more health-related needs.
Age matters too: People over age 65 were more likely than people in their 50s and early 60s to say they don’t like using the computer to communicate about their health, or to say they’re not comfortable with technology in general.
In fact, among older adults who hadn’t yet set up access to a patient portal, 52% cited concerns about communicating online about health information. Fifty percent said they didn’t see the need for this kind of access to their health information. About 40% just hadn’t gotten around to setting up their access yet; these tended to be adults in their 50s and early 60s.
The poll of 2,013 older adults was conducted by the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, and sponsored by AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center.
For the past several years, the federal government has required hospitals, health systems, and other healthcare providers to offer patient portal options to their patients if they want to earn extra funding from Medicare. The requirements include timely access to records and test results that are part of a provider’s electronic health record system.
Among those who had set up an online portal access to their health provider, most (84%) had viewed their results from blood tests or other tests.
But when asked about other portal functions, the numbers dropped off sizably. For instance, only 43% had refilled a prescription online, only 37% had used a portal to schedule an appointment, and only 26% had gotten advice about a health problem from their provider online.
The poll’s results highlight the concerns that might be keeping older adults from setting up and logging in to the patient portals available to them.
For instance, 27% of those who hadn’t set up a portal account were very concerned that online communication would bring a higher chance of error than talking with someone on the phone or in person would. Nineteen percent were very concerned they wouldn’t know who from the provider’s staff was answering their questions, and 17% were very concerned that getting a response to an online communication would take too long.
But among those who had signed up for a portal, the respondents were almost evenly split among those who said phone was faster for getting an answer, those who said the portal was faster, and those who said they were the same.
Another sign that older adults may be missing out on potential portal functions showed up when respondents were asked who else they have authorized to see their health information. Of those who have a portal account, 43% said they had authorized someone else to log in to see their information—mostly spouses and partners but also adult children and other family members, some of whom may be their caregivers.
Among those who hadn’t authorized another user, 22% said they didn’t know how to set this up, and 35% said they prefer to keep their information private. The other 43% said they don’t have anyone else who helps with their medical care. The importance of family support was also highlighted in a recent review paper on older adults and patient portals written by a University of Washington team and published in the journal Medical Informatics.
The poll results are based on answers from a nationally representative sample of 2,013 people ages 50 to 80. The poll respondents answered a wide range of questions online. Questions were written, and data interpreted and compiled, by the IHPI team. Laptops and Internet access were provided to poll respondents who did not already have it. University of Michigan
ACQUISITION
TransUnion acquires Healthcare Payment Specialists
TransUnion is boosting its healthcare solutions with the purchase of Healthcare Payment Specialists (HPS), a company helping healthcare providers optimize Medicare reimbursement.
The acquisition of HPS will add technology that helps healthcare providers identify and recover Medicare reimbursements that they otherwise would not have received. Medicare accounts for 20% of total healthcare expenditures in the U.S., and the market for Medicare reimbursement optimization solutions is growing rapidly.
HPS helps healthcare providers maximize Medicare reimbursement by focusing on payment areas where superior technology and deep domain expertise can drive significant improvements, including:
- Medicare Bad Debt (MBD): Automates the MBD review process to help hospitals accurately and efficiently identify bad debts that are reimbursable
- Medicare Disproportionate Share (DSH): Helps hospitals serving low-income populations maximize their DSH reimbursement by integrating multiple data sources to identify all DSH-eligible patients and patient days
- HPS also has complementary solutions to TransUnion Healthcare in the areas of Transfer Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRG) and Indirect Medical Education/Shadow Billing.
The acquisition is anticipated to close in the second quarter of 2018 pending regulatory approval. TransUnion was advised on the transaction by Baird. TransUnion
CYBERSECURITY
Cybersecurity Survey reveals healthcare enterprises are not maturing fast enough, processes continue underfunded and understaffed
Black Book Market Research surveyed over 2,464 security professionals from 680 provider organizations to identify gaps, vulnerabilities, and deficiencies that persist in keeping hospitals and physicians proverbial sitting ducks for data breaches and cyberattacks. Ninety-six percent of IT professionals agreed with the sentiment that data attackers are outpacing their medical enterprises, holding providers at a disadvantage in responding to vulnerabilities.
A fragmented mix of 410 vendors offering data security services, core products and solutions, software, consulting, and outsourcing received user feedback including large IT companies, mid and small security vendors and start-ups in the polling period Q3 2017 to Q2 2018.
Over 90% of healthcare organizations have experienced a data breach since Q3 2016 and nearly 50% have had more than five data breaches during the same timeframe. Not only has the number of attacks increased, more than 180 million records have been stolen since 2015, affecting about one in every 12 healthcare consumers.
The dramatic rise in successful attacks by both criminal and nation-state-backed hackers illustrates how attractive and vulnerable these healthcare enterprises are to exploitation. Despite these wake-up calls, the provider sector remains exceedingly susceptible to ongoing breaches.
Budget constraints have encumbered the practice of replacing legacy software and devices, leaving enterprises more susceptible to an attack. According to 88% of hospital representatives surveyed, IT security budgets have remained level since 2016. As a percentage of IT organizational budgets, cybersecurity has decreased to about three percent of the total annual IT spend.
Despite the lack of earmarked funds by U.S. buyers, Black Book projects the global healthcare cybersecurity spend to exceed $65 billion cumulatively over the next five years.
A third of hospital executives that purchased cybersecurity solutions between 2016 and 2018 report they did so blindly without much vision or discernment. Ninety-two percent of the data security product or service decisions since 2016 were made at the C level and failed to include any users or affected department managers in the cybersecurity purchasing decision. Only 4% of organizations had a steering committee to evaluate the impact of the cybersecurity investment.
Last year’s Black Book cybersecurity survey revealed 84% of hospitals were operating without a dedicated security executive. As a solution to unsuccessfully recruiting a qualified healthcare chief information security officer, 21% of organizations opted for security outsourcing to partners and consultants or selected security-as-a-service options as a stop-gap measure.
That shortage of healthcare cybersecurity professionals is forcing a rush to acquire services and outsourcing at a pace five times more than cybersecurity products and software solutions. Cybersecurity companies are responding to the labor crunch by offering healthcare providers and hospitals with a growing portfolio of services. Black Book
HEALTHCARE CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT
Change Healthcare teams up with Adobe and Microsoft
Change Healthcare announced its plans for a collaboration with Adobe and Microsoft that will bring providers a more effective way to give patients the experience they want. By uniting engagement orchestration proven to work in consumer marketing with industry leading healthcare IT across the continuum of care, providers can compete on the strength of their patient relationships, beyond their existing quality and cost effectiveness capabilities.
This new approach to consumer engagement is needed because existing methods aren’t working. An ORC International study concluded that healthcare stakeholders are investing heavily in engagement strategies and technologies, but only one-fifth of consumers said their experiences improved, and another fifth said their experiences worsened. Even the most-accessed patient engagement solutions are used by just a third of consumers.
Change Healthcare is now working with Adobe and Microsoft to build a joint solution leveraging the Change Healthcare Intelligent Healthcare Network, Adobe Experience Cloud, and Microsoft Azure to provide patients with improved healthcare experiences. The solution is expected to collect, aggregate, and activate consumer data from disparate healthcare IT sources, including EHRs, registration, scheduling, billing, and other mission-critical applications, while taking care to respect patient confidentiality and privacy.
Providers will be able to use the solution as part of their revenue cycle and patient relationship management (PRM) initiatives to coordinate and personalize multichannel engagement campaigns, develop and manage content, and analyze results the same way retailers activate consumers. The big difference: Instead of promoting a buying experience, these technologies and related services will help provide a better healthcare experience.
This new alliance will help providers leapfrog existing strategies to successfully engage consumers for better clinical and financial outcomes. Change Healthcare
