Is Your Health System Adopting a Portal?

摘要

We have previously written about specific examples of how health systems are finding new ways to connect to their patients. Often, these methods involve portals. This month, we look at portals from the provider's perspective, and we revisit patient portals from a 30,000-foot view.Much of the complexity of providing patient care across a continuum of care occurs at the handoff of the patient to other providers and upon discharge or completion of episodes of care to new levels of self-care management by families and loved ones. A variety of barriers exist that make connectivity across the continuum of care a substantial challenge. Many of these challenges are related to medical-legal issues, while others stem from the inability of one health management application to communicate with another. Interoperability and integration of systems continue to be 2 of the largest problems being faced by health care systems today. As health systems create broader integrated networks of care, it will be possible to have a suite of health information systems that are highly integrated. However, this kind of ideal system is often cost prohibitive to all but a few large health systems.