Patient portal... what to do and who to ask... that's the latest dilemma. In order to build the portal with a proper interface, questions need to be answered. In order for the questions to be answered, people need to be identified to be asking the questions of. Identifying the people likely requires understanding of the process and what might work into the natural course of things best. Questions such as the following are arising and possibly keeping development from moving forward:
Who has access to the portal?
Are there varying levels of access depending on who is accessing?
Which providers are given access?
Is the provider portal inter- or intranet based?
What is the process for assigning logins?
What support is provided and by whom?
What is the process for re-assigning lost passwords?
What is acceptable proof of identity to get re-assigned a lost password?
Are there legal implications to the decisions made surrounding any of these questions?
...and I'm certain there are plenty more. The real issue is identifying the who's and how's in getting questions such as these answered. Do we form a committee? If so, who resides on it? etc..... Perhaps this has already been thought out and a solution exists. If so, it's time to share those thoughts with Web Services (especially Michael Sheehan). Perhaps some of the Shared Care Plan Summit can be spent in discussion around this issue?
Here's some information Michael has shared about his vision of the portal will work:
Patient
Comes in from the Internet always
Initial registration will require staff process to validate
Patient will be linked to their Medical Manager number; LastWord Number if they have one; and any other clinic ID number used in the practice
Demographics that may be fairly detailed will be entered by the patient initially (assume that longer term there will be data moving between systems - lots of things to consider here)
This creates a Patient Portal that will evolve over time to include more and more patient specific information and eventually prompts
The patient will connect with a secure link connection and will see ONLY their information
For shared care plan - will be able to view, enter, and edit all information for them (we will need an audit trail)
Their will be education links that are specific to the patient's disease and in the longer term that will be segmented by things like learning style for the individual patient
Staff
Comes in from behind our firewall generally (this will be a good discussion to see how to handle staff - I assume that everyone will be on our network - something to confirm - Do we allow access to this over the Internet from home or if they are off-site for some reason)
Initial user name and password will need to be set up
Very limited user demographics entered
The security may evolve over time - initially I recommend that a staff member has access to the Shared Care Plan application and that they can access any patient that has a shared care plan - I really hope that we can keep this process simple
Staff person will need a look-up feature to access a patient and their care plan (audit trail on who they access)
Staff will be able to see the shared care plan in the same format as the patient
Staff can enter and edit information (audit trail)
