Improving Uptake and Use of Personal Health Records

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Project Details -
Completed

Personal health records (PHRs) allow patients to participate in their health care in new ways. While studies have found a high degree of patient interest in PHRs, actual adoption rates are low and, once adopted, improvements in patient quality of care have not been well demonstrated. Previous studies focused on the satisfaction of current users but did not fully describe how a patient decides to use a PHR. Techniques that provider organizations can use to encourage and support PHR adoption among patients are also not well understood.

This project took a comprehensive approach to studying adoption of PHRs using the Diffusion of Innovation Framework. This framework assisted in the understanding of factors that influence adoption by studying the different stages of the innovation-decision process, including the patient's perceived attributes of the innovation, attitudes toward adoptions of PHRs, and the impact of perceptions and attitudes on behavioral intentions as well as actual behaviors. The project introduced the PHR to four selected practices (two controls and two active intervention practices) to study the impact of multi-intervention strategies on uptake and continued use of the PHR. The investigators assessed the facilitators and barriers to adoption, implementation, and use of the PHR at the organizational and patient levels, and evaluated the impact of the intervention on adoption and usage rates. The final task was to assess the impact of the PHR on the quality of care, as measured by a patient survey on patient-centeredness and through a set of quality measures on health outcomes.