Coaching Small Primary Care Practices to Use Patient Portals

Hypertension and Diabetes Quality Improvement in a Practice Transformation Network

“…9 In addition, patient portal use was strongly urged to engage patients and to provide opportunities for 24-hour/7-day communication. 8 These interventions were supported in educational forums and in web learning and reinforced to practice staff by coaches who supported and promoted the same message. These interventions engaged practices in the common agenda of quality improvement in key areas of chronic disease—hypertension and diabetes.…”

“…Practices were guided by coaches in the optimal use of patient portals as a communication tool that allowed asynchronous and after-hours patient communication with practitioners/physicians. 8 In addition, practice analytics dashboards were made available to each practice to drive home the need for improved management of chronic disease in order to reduce unnecessary utilization and associated costs. 9…”

Facilitating Practice Transformation in Frontline Health Care

“…Khanna et al 16 reiterate the lesson that "smaller practices are most likely to lack resources to review, interpret, and act on data." Gritzer and colleagues in the Garden Practice Transformation Network 19 describe an innovation that entailed facilitating small practices' use of patient portals that offers several exemplars of the study by Rogers et al, 15 namely, practice facilitator interventions with EHR vendors to enable patient portal functionality, help practices understand related return on investment, teach them to use portal functions, and assist them in realizing the role of patients in informing and improving quality. These studies are important for showing that effective practice facilitation is not just technical assistance, but rather may need to also include help with using quality data and building confidence and skills, sharing learning, and even conducting advocacy.…”