Always great when people who work in healthcare IT bumped into it in their own personal lives. That’s what makes this tweet from Steven Posnak so interesting:
"I don't want to be portal'd"
(#burn from my mom last night)An unknowingly piercing critique of her current healthcare experience in six words.
— Steven Posnack (@HealthIT_Policy) March 23, 2018
For those not familiar with Steven Posnak, he’s the Director of the Office of Standards and Technology at ONC. He’s very familiar with these challenges on a policy level and now he’s gotten a first hand look on a personal level. I think most patients understand the idea of being portal’d.
One great thing about Steven Posnak’s tweet was that it inspired Arien Malec to share this tweetstorm about the need for an untethered patient portal:
To address this #EHR developers would have to commit to untethered portals & public #API for all current portal functions. https://t.co/xvot9YeCVO
— Arien Malec (@amalec) March 23, 2018
2/ we used to have a substantive business model addressing patient access & experience cross provider
— Arien Malec (@amalec) March 23, 2018
3/ biggest obstacle: Integration with #EHR
If providers have to do extra work, no go.
We were effectively blocked out by “large midwestern” EHR developers who were trying to build own portals
— Arien Malec (@amalec) March 23, 2018
4/ tbh, we bought a small practice #EHR at MCK back in the day, & the team there fought tooth & nail to preserve proprietary portals
— Arien Malec (@amalec) March 23, 2018
5/ not sure @ONC_HealthIT could solo drive this – unless each & every portal action goes through #API, tethered will have better provider experience
— Arien Malec (@amalec) March 23, 2018
6/ but here’s the market failure point:
– tethered portal = better provider experience, worse patient experience (when #patient receiving care across providers)
Which experience counts?
Market has decided against #patient
END
— Arien Malec (@amalec) March 23, 2018
This is some great analysis of why we have tethered portals today. I don’t see EHR vendors ever fully committing to an untethered portal and public API for all portal functions. Can you see it happening? I can’t. The future of healthcare portals is tethered portals, until we leapfrog way past it.