Wiki MU Stage 2 "Secure Electronic Messaging"

[CatchTheWind]

Stage 2 of Meaningful Use requires us to receive electronic messages from at least 5% of our patients. This is absolutely unrealistic for our practice; we normally get email or portal messages from patients only once in a blue moon!

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get 5% of our patients to send us electronic messages?

(The only idea we've come up with is to have the receptionists hand patients who are sitting in the waiting room a laptop or tablet and ask them to send us a portal message while waiting. This sounds like a mammoth waste of time for the receptionists (because we know the patients are going to ask them to walk them through the process!), not to mention being awkward putting the patients on the spot like that!)

 

[Katiedid64]

Kathryn in Idaho

Our clinic gave up on having the patients do their own set up- it was too confusing and we spent hours with them on the phone and having them sit in our office for long periods of time- so our receptionist does all initial set up and actually sends us an email back from their portal. We then send the patient instructions on how to change their password and let them go from there. Note, we have only two patients that have sent correspondence on their own- overwhelmingly they say it's easier to call. Good luck!

 

[msjules328]

I consult a lot of practices in regards to MU workflows. We've advised our clients to do a "demo" of the portal while the patient is waiting for provider to come in. Username/password issued to the patient at check in (one measure met).. have the nurse/MA log in with the patient, change their password, view their clinical summary (second measure met) and then show them how to send a "test" message (measure three met)

If your provider sees 20 patients a day, that's one patient a day that will need to send a message. Find your savviest patient and this should only take a few minutes start to finish!

Hope this helps!