Does Patient Portal Equivalent to Clinical Visit - Essay Example

Importance clinical visits to patent portals Introduction With this dynami in Information and technologysociety, increase in development of information technology as well as its improved infrastructure used in transferring information from one hand to another and great dependence on other social issues in improving the medical services. This information revolution has drastically changed the lives of people and their relations, which has lead to change from capital based to knowledge-based society. In my opinion, the development of this infrastructure has lead to trained workforce as Patient Portal act is online. This sites consisting of professionals in various fields of the human body such as physicians and surgeons, helps in communications and interaction with patients. Therefore, patient portals should be equivalent to clinical visits. According to Butterfield (2014), patients are capable of accessing their medical records, pay for their services, refill prescription and schedule appointment. The patient portal technology specifically when integrated with electronic health record (EHR) has the capability of improving the living standards, by ensuring both accesses to quality care, as patients are capable of communicating effectively and efficiently with the experts online. On the other hand, the clinical visits should not be abandoned. Patient portal technology to me, is considered to be the most effective and efficient manner of acquiring health care services, since, it involves a face to face interaction with the health care providers. The health care providers can cross-examine patient for better medication as compared to the online services. Being the oldest and the most preferred method used by most patients in attending most medications, it also faces some of the drawbacks. This is because it needs a clear framework, in that times for the medications are adhered to compare to the patient portal where a single physician or doctor can fully handle a group of individual at a time (Hejazi & Sarmadi, 2013). The benefit of the portal users is that they can access their updated personal health information at anytime and anywhere they are. Also, they are capable of sharing their images in case of any X- Rays conducted and share documents of any previous medications. With the present lifestyle, most individuals get attacked with many types of diseases hence need to keep a clear record on a day to day medication. In this case, patient portal acts as the effective way of having an updated data. In spite the rapid growth in use of the patient portal and the patients being well satisfied, the recent research conducted and published between 1990s and the begging of 2013, mainly to focus on the outcome of the use of the portal, the researchers identified a similar use of most of the features by many of the online health providers, such access educational materials, formats in message sending, view of test results and the refilling and viewing of medications. But this is due to lack of innovations among health providers and similarly using portal features that never provides appropriate actions in helping the patients. From the research, the portal is highly affected by ethnicity and race, high level of illiteracy and several unsolved medical problems (Pear et al., 2013). With drawbacks in place, Patient portal remains the most efficient way of attaining medication in most of the developed countries like United States. Moreover, this country too faces some of the drawbacks in terms of handling of patients. Some patients need personal attention from the health experts because most of them end up having chronicle diseases due to high dependency on online services without paying an intention of day to day visits to the clinics. We can note that patient portal health organizations ought to acquire electronic gadgets. These gargets it is of high efficiency in terms of easiness in transferring the patience’s clinical template from one centre to another. Most of the clinical template given during the clinical visits may end up being destroyed thus the use of the application will highly create a good data for the patients (Pear et al., 2013). However with me, the use of the patient portal has helped in improving the health services, since the health providers can give a clear medication, more so where a quick response is highly required. Patient portal is of high benefits to the patients since it does not only improves the health satisfaction and easy access to the required tools, but also helps in reducing the costs and hence increasing the patience’s autonomy. Simply, the electronically way of service, helps patients to self-manage their health, in that appointments periods can easily be checked through the encrypted portal and a clear medication can be acted upon (Wilkins, 2013). By the use of the portal, health providers also streamline their administrative processes. It makes it easy in conducting it services to patients in a most efficient and quick manner, since no more mailing health documents in case the patients can access them online, they can educate new patients or the existing once the number of missed appointments highly reduces due to an organized schedule on a daily basis (Butterfield, 2014). . It is sad to see that, despite the advantages involved with the use of technology, most of the doctors and the highly trained personnel have not yet adopted the system. A physician will have to look for an easier way and one that takes a little time to learn and use. Many of them are unwilling to adopt these systems but use a complex system is disengaging their interest (Hejazi & Sarmadi, 2013). Although the main objective of the establishment of the patient portal, is to create a platform that makes patients get quick and faster services like their records, paying bills, it experiences a major challenge in terms of efficient use of the equipment by some of the local and poor patients since they need to spend some cash in acquiring the required gadgets. Even with an improved level of technology, the healthcare industry is still appearing behind in the sector of technology. ‘Electronic Media Record (EMR)’, systems have a user interface that is so obsolete (Pear et al., 2013). This is because of privacy concerns accrued to their system though it is not a reason that should hold them back because there is technology advancement that provide security network. Although they invest a lot of money in adopting the Electronic Media Record (EMR) software, the cost of switching tends to be too dangerous to consider, leaving very little motivation for its creators to go with their improvement process to upgrade their product Characteristics of ‘EMR’ need to be those that minimize time, improve accuracy, and help in giving the best care to the patients. An ‘EMR’ should contain a user interface that is easier to master. Unpleasing, contradicting interfaces will consume a lot of time and could give rise to errors. This will intern make it hard for health organizations to attain it objectives and goals as to its desires (Hejazi & Sarmadi, 2013). As I consider patient portal adoption best method electronic way of keeping in touch with patients, it is also considered the most misused platform in providing a required direction towards medication with well advanced scholars. An ‘EMR’ that is not appealing to the patients does not provide better services to the patients. Software frustrations can also lead in dedicating more time in solving technical problems instead of focusing on patients’ health issues. Out-of-date and poorly designed system in some of the health providers, inefficiency and interruption of workflow is highly experienced. Hence, productive time is lost when a physician has to check all different tabs and remove the obsolete and cluttered system (Luks, 2013). Conclusion Considering patient portal in being supported by most of the governments and myself in person as a way of improving the health welfare of the most patients, it faces a lot of challenges that need to be solved. Patient Portals makes patients to be in a position of acquiring personal and general information more efficiently and effectively. As per the current world report, most individuals are living below the poverty level, hence in accessing the portal services is a challenge to most of them. Challenges are there, but they should not act as a basis of abandoning patient portals by most health organizations. As per the clinical visit that is most efficient manner of acquiring most of the medication, should be highly encouraged since at this level most patients are able identify their health condition since they are keenly monitored by the health provider’s hence better health services. The challenging thing about most of the patient portal providers is the lack of clear defined rules to manage the application. References Butterfield, B. (2014). Patient Portal Adoption. Executive Insight Hejazi, S., & Sarmadi, S. (2013). Quality evaluation of portal sites in health system, as a tool for education and learning. Journal of Education and Health Promotion. 2(56). Luks, H. (2013). Use technology to build trust with your patients. KevinMD Pear, R. et al. (2013). From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal. New York Times Wilkins, S. (2013). If you build a patient portal, why won’t they come? KevinMD Read More