Impact of Patient Access to Online VA Notes on Healthcare Utilization and Clinician Documentation: a Retrospective Cohort Study
Authors
Blok, Amanda C.Amante, Daniel J.
Hogan, Timothy P.
Sadasivam, Rajani S.
Shimada, Stephanie L.
Woods, Susan
Nazi, Kim M.
Houston, Thomas K.
UMass Chan Affiliations
Division of Health Informatics and Implementation Science, Department of Population and Quantitative Health SciencesDocument Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2021-01-14Keywords
VAVeterans Administration
online patient portal
clinical notes
open notes
UMCCTS funding
Health Information Technology
Health Services Administration
Health Services Research
Internal Medicine
Military and Veterans Studies
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
BACKGROUND: In an effort to foster patient engagement, some healthcare systems provide their patients with open notes, enabling them to access their clinical notes online. In January 2013, the Veterans Health Administration (VA) implemented online access to clinical notes ("VA Notes") through the Blue Button feature of its patient portal. OBJECTIVE: To measure the association of online patient access to clinical notes with changes in healthcare utilization and clinician documentation behaviors. DESIGN: A retrospective cohort study. PATIENTS: Patients accessing My HealtheVet (MHV), the VA's online patient portal, between July 2011 and January 2015. MAIN MEASURES: Use of healthcare services (primary care clinic visits and online electronic secure messaging), and characteristics of physician clinical documentation (readability of notes). KEY RESULTS: Among 882,575 unique portal users, those who accessed clinical notes (16.2%; N = 122,972) were younger, more racially homogenous (white), and less likely to be financially vulnerable. Compared with non-users, Notes users more frequently used the secure messaging feature on the portal (mean of 2.6 messages (SD 7.0) v. 0.87 messages (SD 3.3) in January-July 2013), but their higher use of secure messaging began prior to VA Notes implementation, and thus was not temporally related to the implementation. When comparing clinic visit rates pre- and post-implementation, Notes users had a small but significant increase in rate of 0.36 primary care clinic visits (2012 v. 2013) compared to portal users who did not view their Notes (p = 0.01). At baseline, the mean reading ease of primary care clinical notes was 53.8 (SD 10.1) and did not improve after implementation of VA Notes. CONCLUSIONS: VA Notes users were different than patients with portal access who did not view their notes online, and they had higher rates of healthcare service use prior to and after VA Notes implementation. Opportunities exist to improve clinical note access and readability.Source
Blok AC, Amante DJ, Hogan TP, Sadasivam RS, Shimada SL, Woods S, Nazi KM, Houston TK. Impact of Patient Access to Online VA Notes on Healthcare Utilization and Clinician Documentation: a Retrospective Cohort Study. J Gen Intern Med. 2021 Jan 14. doi: 10.1007/s11606-020-06304-0. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33443693. Link to article on publisher's site
DOI
10.1007/s11606-020-06304-0Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/46916PubMed ID
33443693Related Resources
Rights
© Society of General Internal Medicine (This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply) 2021ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1007/s11606-020-06304-0