Engaging Patients With Health Data Cuts Louisiana ED Overuse

Maybe I’m misreading things, but it seems to me that few health IT pros really believe we can get patients to leverage their own health data successfully. And I understand why. After all, we don’t even have clear evidence that patient portals improve outcomes, and portals are probably the most successful engagement tool the industry has come up with to date.

And not to be a jerk about it, but I bet you’d be hard-pressed to find HIT gurus who believed the state of Louisiana would lead the way, as the achingly poor southern state isn’t exactly known for being a healthcare thought leader.  As it so happens, though, the state has actually succeeded where highfalutin’ health systems have failed.

Over one year, the state has managed to generate a 23% increase in health IT use among at-risk patients, and also, a 10.2% decrease in non-emergent use of emergency departments by Medicaid managed care organization members, thank you very much.

So how did Louisiana’s top healthcare brass accomplish this feat? Among other things, they launched a HIE-enabled ED data registry, along with a direct-to-consumer patient engagement campaign. These efforts were done in partnership with the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum, which developed statewide marketing plans for the effort (See John’s interview with the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum for more details).

They must have created some snazzy marketing copy. As Healthcare IT News noted, between August 2015 and May 2016, patient portal use shot up 31%, consumer EHR awareness rose 23% and opt-in to the state’s HIE grew by 3%, Quality Forum marketer Jamie Martin told HIN.

Not only that, the number of patients asking for access to or copies of electronic health data increased by 12%, and the number of patients with current copies of their health information grew by 9%, Martin said.

This is great news for those who want to see patients buy in to the digital health paradigm. Though it’s hard to tell whether the state will be able to maintain the benefits it gained in its initial effort, it clearly succeeded in getting a substantial number of patients to rethink how they manage their care.

But (and I’m sorry to be a bit of a Debbie Downer), I was a bit disappointed when I saw none of the gains cited related to changing health behaviors, such as, say, an increase in diabetics getting retinal exams.

I know that I should probably be focused on the project’s commendable successes, and believe it or not, I do find them to be exciting. I’m just not sure that these kinds of metrics can be used as proxies for health improvement measures, and let’s face it, that’s what we need, right?

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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