National eHealth Collaborative Survey Results

The results of a survey given to 450 members of the National eHealth Collaborative on July 16th were released. The goal of the survey was to “build an understanding of consumer engagement strategies currently underway and planned for the future,” according to a press release. There were many interesting findings from this survey. The primary goals for consumer engagement with health IT included the following:

  • 68% – improve health outcomes
  • 66% – deliver information to patients
  • 59% – enable consumers to take more responsibility for their health
  • 59% – reduce healthcare costs
  • 57% – improve consumers’ experience in interacting with our organization

Along the same lines, those surveyed were asked what their definition of consumer engagement was. There were quite a few answers, but the top three were:

  • Patient uses electronic educational material or online resources to learn about better health or their own health conditions (74%)
  • Patient refills prescriptions or accesses lab results or other personal health data online (72%)
  • Patient engages with provider through electronic means (e.g. telemedicine) (71%)

Kate Berry, CEO of NeHC, commented on the survey:

Effectively leveraging health IT to engage with patients and consumers will lead to better healthcare outcomes. Our surveyshows that a majority of organizations believe in the strategic importance of consumer engagement yet their strategies are understandably nascent. NeHC’s Consumer Consortium on eHealth and HIE Learning Network can serve as forums for sharing consumer engagement lessons learned to help accelerate progress.

The complete results of the survey can be found here.

About the author

Katie Clark

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

   

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