Title: Low adoption of EHR patient portal in U.S.A adult population: What has social media and digital divide got to do with it?

Abstract

Objective: Our study aimed to determine the effect of a digital divide in the adoption of online patient portals by the motivated patients who wish to improve their health outcomes by use of internet and information technology, to assess determinants of low adoption rates of online portals, and to explore social media use as a correlation to patient portal use. Methods: We utilized data from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS, 2017 and 2018). We performed a cross-sectional study analyzing the outcome variable of patient portal use with several predictor variables: age, marital status, gender, mental health, education, Medicaid, income, number of people in household, trust, social media, chronic disease, and health app use. Basic descriptive statistics and logistic regression were performed using SPSS version 25. Results: Our study found that low adoption rates go beyond the digital divide. Previously identified digital divide factors like health insurance type, age, and chronic disease, which are determinants of patient portal use in the general population, were not significant predictors in our motivated sampled population. The study also found that a correlation exists between social media use and patient portal use. Conclusions: Many of the factors previously identified by the literature may not be a barrier to patient portal use by self-motivated individuals, which underscores the importance of self-motivation inpatient portal use. Behavioral/ motivational interventions and improvement in its usability geared towards adopting online portals can improve its public health significance.

Biography

Ahmed is an advocate of 360 degrees digital health evaluation. A holistic methodology of digital health outcome evaluation emphasizing its impact on public health improvement and health disparity. He is presently a clinical informaticist/clinical instructor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He champions various electronic health record optimization projects for efficiency and clinical workflow improvement.