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The Patient Portal—Help or Hindrance?
Just Want to Talk | Last Active: Feb 17 12:10am | Replies (227)Comment receiving replies
I am dealing with 5 of them. I have some basic issues with portals in part from having been in the IT business some time ago. In my current business role I need to access numbers of web sites daily. My issues are the same with web sites and medical portals. Every one thinks theirs is crystal clear. Few are. I find the medical portals overly complex even to just access them and to try to find the basic needs. Readers here may all know that there are some "software providers" that many medical faculties use. I unfortunately discovered that two medical clinics that subscribed to portal software from the same vendor were also sharing information about my medical results. The two clinics had no connection with each other at all. Another issue is your medical history and Rx you are taking or have been. They often only use the literal medical Rx names; so, I too often don't know what they are referencing or they are overly complex when you recognize them and need to change them. Just some thoughts here.
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I worked in high tech industry and led projects for implementing universal databases. It takes time (and patience) to educate people. And sometimes the right person (as someone who understands how a database works and the world of the user) is not the person chosen to implement project. But well-designed databases offer a tremendous opportunity in medicine. It makes it easy to track symptoms and treatment outcomes across a grand variety of clinical pictures.
The idea of having a patient portal tied to a database of information is to make it easy for people to change doctors and to see the results of their tests and doctor's notes. But uniformity is required to segment things correctly in the underlying database - maybe that is why they use generic names of drugs so as not to confuse brand names and generics .
Clinics are supposed to be able to see each other's information on the patient - that is IF you are their patient. That is how they see your whole clinical picture...and also avoid duplicate tests. In the case of a medical emergency that will be critical!!!