Health for life

"Hi doc! I used my on-line portal to make an appointment!"

Hey there Accountable Care Organization executive.

Youre probably willing to continue to commit millions of dollars toward an electronic health record (EHR) coupled to an online patient portal.  Thats because youve been told by your leadership team that electronic consumer empowerment, patient-provider communication and the substitution of efficient two-way messaging for costly face-to-face visits will increase quality, reduce expenses, generate shared savings and guarantee that your life-sized portrait will be prominently displayed in your flagship hospitals lobby.

Well, after youve read a just-published JAMA research study by Ted Palen, Colleen Ross, David Powers and Stanley Xu, you may want to tell your administrative assistant to cancel that appointment with the portrait artist.

The articles title is Association of Online Patient Access to Clinicians and Medical Records With Use of Clinical Services.

How the study was done:

Kaiser Permanente Colorado added "MyHealthManager" (MHM) to their EHR in May 2006. MHM allows patients to view tests, records, problem lists as well as care plans, schedule appointments, request ills and message their doctors. By June of 2009, over 375,000 Kaiser patients had signed up for MHM. Of those, about 45% had used the system at least once.  Of this number, Kaiser researchers pulled the records of 44,321 persons who had been continuously enrolled in the Kaiser system for at least two years. 

This group was retrospectively matched to a control group of Kaiser patients who had not signed up for MHM.  The authors did this through "propensity matching." This found a similar number of patients, based on age, gender, race, number of chronic illnesses and baseline office visits who, using logistic regression analytics, appeared to be the type of patient who would otherwise sign up for MHM.

The results:

Compared to non-MHM patients, the MHM experienced an increase in hospitalization rates (20 per thousand patients) and emergency room visits (11 per thousand).  In other words, for every hundred patients, the on-line portal seemed to lead to 2 extra hospitalizations and 1 extra ER visit. Both differences were statistically significant.

There were also increases in the number of office visits (.7 per patient per year), telephone calls (.3 per patient per year) and after-hour clinic visits (18.7 per thousand patients per year).

Caveats:

The authors correctly point out that this study is not perfect.  Retrospective propensity matching is not as good as a randomized clinical trial; its possible that the patients who self-selected for MHM were already realtively more interested in or likely to increase their use of health care services.  Results at Kaiser may not apply elsewhere.

Implications:

Despite the limitations, this study should be a wake-up call for those who believe EHR portals is a savings panacea.  By increasing access to on-line services, physicians and patients may paradoxically use the system to address concerns that otherwise wouldnt come to medical attention.  In other words, the EHR portal exacerbates the classic health care economics problem of supplier-induced demand.

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Whats the one issue that drives the most doctors crazy?  The Disease Management Care Blog suspects its persons who use basic vaccinations.  Thats because physicians are inculcated from the first day of their education with triumphant stories of how basic science and public health joined forces to banish many common and fatal infectious diseases. 

Not getting your shots is crazy.

DMCB readers are probably aware of how childhood U.S. vaccination rates are dropping.  While we continue to wonder just how any parent or guardian could let that happen, heres a handy summary on the story behind the story: the New England Journal has an article on Improving Childhood Vaccination Rates:

Total U.S. rates of vaccination remain greater than 90%, but there are some pockets of the country with rates just over 50%. Thats where there have been outbreaks of disease leading to some pointless deaths.

Parents (or guardians) opposed to vaccination are unlikely to change their minds.  Thats why high vaccination rates among the remainder of children are important to create herd immunity.

There are four approaches to achieving high vaccination rates:

1. Make shots free and think about paying parents to have their children immunized.

The DMCB likes the idea but wishes the authors had pointed out that in the context of value-based insurance, this is hardly a radical idea. 

2. Make it really difficult to attend school without proof of vaccination.  Getting an exemption should demonstrate that the parents are serious and not shuffling by on lax enforcement.

The DMCB grew up in New York City and recalls being immunized against polio in the schools cafeteria.  Is it time to bring this back as a first-line strategy?

3. Confront the anti-vaccine community with counter-education campaigns that rely on more than facts and figures.  Anecdotes and trusted public figures should also be used.

Whither social media?  And, at a traditional marketing level, the DMCB thinks that maybe its time to partner with the pharma companies that do such a good job of convincing TV viewers to take lipid-lowering agents and anti-depressants.  Nothing against the colleagues in public health, but theyre not known for their marketing savvy.

4. Physicians need to step up one patient at a time and, while theyre at it, make sure theyre up to date with their shots.

The DMCB did a literature search on "shared decision making" and "vaccination" and found no useful information.  Given the success of aids and engagement strategies that enable truly informed decision-making, the DMCB thinks its time for the population health management community to step up and offer their services.

(One last thought: Newts been lampooned for his moon-base wackiness, but as the DMCB understands it, his recommendation is really based on an X-Prize approach, which he contrasts with the discontinued Shuttle program.  The DMCB wonders if such an approach couldnt work in those areas of the country with critically low childhood vaccination rates: a 5 figure prize to any outfit that can move it to 90%.  Why not?)

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