HIMSS: E-engagement offers good results for Kaiser

NEW ORLEANS—The key capabilities for electronic patient engagement are connect, learn and act, said Kate Christensen, MD, medical director internet services group at Kaiser Permanente. She spoke during the Physicians’ IT Symposium on March 3 at the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) annual convention about how the organization is achieving those capabilities for its patients.

Kaiser’s patient portal, My health manager, lets users connect to make appointments and access their clinicians, she said. “People want to connect and use that connection to start learning.”

In 2012, Kaiser patients sent 13 million emails, most of which were clinically relevant, Christensen said. And members of the portal who use secure messaging with their doctors have better outcomes with diabetes control, blood pressure control and lipid management. While more analysis and assessment is needed, “there is an association there,” she said.

Christensen said she’s also seen that “people love looking at their test results” and that leads to learning. For example, when patients see their A1C levels, they subsequently learn what that means, where their level should be and how they can achieve that goal. Kaiser patients have viewed 33 million test results. Christensen appealed to her audience, however, to be very transparent with test results. “If you’re in the process of rolling out this type of process, please be very transparent. Give them every possible test result you can. If you only include the ones that doctors are comfortable with, that’s a very short list.” Not including enough information could lead patients to panic that something is wrong, she said.

Kaiser patients made 3 million appointments online last year which resulted in decreasing the no-show rate by 33 percent. Patients also can cancel appointments online, which, Christensen said equates to much earlier cancellations than those who make appointments by other methods.

Patients also sent 12 million refill requests sent which represents 30 percent of all Kaiser refills. Christensen said patients who use that process have better medication adherence.

For the act part of the electronic patient engagement effort, Kaiser offers several healthy lifestyle programs including smoking cessation, diet and exercise and depression treatment. These programs “have been shown to have a really good effect,” Christensen said. “They get people to actually take actions. They also increase loyalty to the practice.” For example, My health manager users are 2.6 times more likely than nonusers to remain with Kaiser.