title: Improved quality at Kaiser Permanente through e-mail between physicians and patients.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Information TechnologyTransformation and Analytics, Kaiser Permanente, Portland, Oregon, USA. yvonne.y.zhou@kp.org
authors.forename: Yi Yvonne
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Michael H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Kanter
authors.forename: Jian J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Terhilda
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Garrido
mesh_terms: 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