Improved quality at Kaiser Permanente through e-mail between physicians and patients.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act identified secure patient-physician e-mail messaging as an objective of the meaningful use of electronic health records. In our study of 35,423 people with diabetes, hypertension, or both, the use of secure patient-physician e-mail within a two-month period was associated with a statistically significant improvement in effectiveness of care as measured by the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS). In addition, the use of e-mail was associated with an improvement of 2.0-6.5 percentage points in performance on other HEDIS measures such as glycemic (HbA1c), cholesterol, and blood pressure screening and control.
Zhou
Yi Yvonne
YY
Information TechnologyTransformation and Analytics, Kaiser Permanente, Portland, Oregon, USA. yvonne.y.zhou@kp.org
Kanter
Michael H
MH
Wang
Jian J
JJ
Garrido
Terhilda
T
D057171:American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000097:blood / Q000628:therapy; D057286:Electronic Health Records; D034742:Electronic Mail; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014481:United States