TY - JOUR
T1 - Patient engagement as measured by inpatient portal use
T2 - Methodology for log file analysis
AU - Huerta, Timothy
AU - Fareed, Naleef
AU - Hefner, Jennifer L.
AU - Sieck, Cynthia J.
AU - Swoboda, Christine
AU - Taylor, Robert
AU - McAlearney, Ann Scheck
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
©Timothy Huerta, Naleef Fareed, Jennifer L. Hefner, Cynthia J Sieck, Christine Swoboda, Robert Taylor, Ann Scheck McAlearney.
PY - 2019/3
Y1 - 2019/3
N2 - Background: Inpatient portals (IPPs) have the potential to increase patient engagement and satisfaction with their health care. An IPP provides a hospitalized patient with similar functions to those found in outpatient portals, including the ability to view vital signs, laboratory results, and medication information; schedule appointments; and communicate with their providers. However, IPPs may offer additional functions such as meal planning, real-time messaging with the inpatient care team, daily schedules, and access to educational materials relevant to their specific condition. In practice, IPPs have been developed as websites and tablet apps, with hospitals providing the required technology as a component of care during the patient’s stay. Objective: This study aimed to describe how inpatients are using IPPs at the first academic medical center to implement a system-wide IPP and document the challenges and choices associated with this analytic process. Methods: We analyzed the audit log files of IPP users hospitalized between January 2014 and January 2016. Data regarding the date/time and duration of interactions with each of the MyChart Bedside modules (eg, view lab results or medications and patient schedule) and activities (eg, messaging the provider and viewing educational videos) were captured as part of the system audit logs. The development of a construct to describe the length of time associated with a single coherent use of the tool—which we call a session—provides a foundational unit of analysis. We defined frequency as the number of sessions a patient has during a given provision day. We defined comprehensiveness in terms of the percentage of functions that an individual uses during a given provision day. Results: The analytic process presented data challenges such as length of stay and tablet-provisioning factors. This study presents data visualizations to illustrate a series of data-cleaning issues. In the presence of these robust approaches to data cleaning, we present the baseline usage patterns associated with our patient panel. In addition to frequency and comprehensiveness, we present considerations of median data to mitigate the effect of outliers. Conclusions: Although other studies have published usage data associated with IPPs, most have not explicated the challenges and choices associated with the analytic approach deployed within each study. Our intent in this study was to be somewhat exhaustive in this area, in part, because replicability requires common metrics. Our hope is that future researchers in this area will avail themselves of these perspectives to engage in critical assessment moving forward.
AB - Background: Inpatient portals (IPPs) have the potential to increase patient engagement and satisfaction with their health care. An IPP provides a hospitalized patient with similar functions to those found in outpatient portals, including the ability to view vital signs, laboratory results, and medication information; schedule appointments; and communicate with their providers. However, IPPs may offer additional functions such as meal planning, real-time messaging with the inpatient care team, daily schedules, and access to educational materials relevant to their specific condition. In practice, IPPs have been developed as websites and tablet apps, with hospitals providing the required technology as a component of care during the patient’s stay. Objective: This study aimed to describe how inpatients are using IPPs at the first academic medical center to implement a system-wide IPP and document the challenges and choices associated with this analytic process. Methods: We analyzed the audit log files of IPP users hospitalized between January 2014 and January 2016. Data regarding the date/time and duration of interactions with each of the MyChart Bedside modules (eg, view lab results or medications and patient schedule) and activities (eg, messaging the provider and viewing educational videos) were captured as part of the system audit logs. The development of a construct to describe the length of time associated with a single coherent use of the tool—which we call a session—provides a foundational unit of analysis. We defined frequency as the number of sessions a patient has during a given provision day. We defined comprehensiveness in terms of the percentage of functions that an individual uses during a given provision day. Results: The analytic process presented data challenges such as length of stay and tablet-provisioning factors. This study presents data visualizations to illustrate a series of data-cleaning issues. In the presence of these robust approaches to data cleaning, we present the baseline usage patterns associated with our patient panel. In addition to frequency and comprehensiveness, we present considerations of median data to mitigate the effect of outliers. Conclusions: Although other studies have published usage data associated with IPPs, most have not explicated the challenges and choices associated with the analytic approach deployed within each study. Our intent in this study was to be somewhat exhaustive in this area, in part, because replicability requires common metrics. Our hope is that future researchers in this area will avail themselves of these perspectives to engage in critical assessment moving forward.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063713031&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85063713031&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2196/10957
DO - 10.2196/10957
M3 - Article
C2 - 30907733
AN - SCOPUS:85063713031
SN - 1439-4456
VL - 21
JO - Journal of medical Internet research
JF - Journal of medical Internet research
IS - 3
M1 - e10957
ER -