FROM THE FOUNDATION

The Social Life of Health Information

A new Pew Internet/CHCF national survey finds the Internet has joined doctors and family members as one of the top three ways people search for answer to their health care questions.

Evaluating One-e-App

CHCF and The California Endowment funded the development of One-e-App, a Web-based program that enables users to apply for multiple public insurance programs at once. Read a business case assessment by The Lewin Group.

Privacy, Security, and the Stimulus Bill

The recently enacted economic stimulus legislation includes a number of improvements to federal health privacy law. This brief looks at issues of privacy and security in the wake of ARRA.

Consumer Information

Monday, July 16, 2007

Web-based Messaging System Reduces Office Visits, Phone Calls

Patients participating in a Web-based message service made fewer visits and telephone calls to their physician's office than a control group of patients who did not use the service, according to a study published by Kaiser Permanente researchers, Modern Healthcare reports.

In addition, the study, published in the July issue of the American Journal of Managed Care, found that patients using the KP HealthConnect portal made fewer office visits than they did prior to using the service.

The study, which ran primarily from September 2002 to August 2005, involved two study groups. The cohort study involved 4,686 adult members of Kaiser Permanente Northwest region who were registered for the electronic messaging service for more than 13 months and had used it at least once. The matched-control study involved 3,201 members from the cohort study group and matched them with the same amount of patients who had demographic and clinical profiles but who were not using the service.

The study found that:

  • In the cohort study, annual office visits of registered KP HealthConnect users decreased 9.7% from an average of 2.47 visits per patient to 2.24 visits per patient;
  • In the matched-control study, annual office visits for registered KP HealthConnect users decreased 10.2% from an average of 2.44 per member to 2.19, while annual office visits for members of the control group not using the service dropped 3.7%; and
  • Due to a change in how Kaiser counted telephone calls in the survey, there was a 24% increase in phone calls for all patients. However, in the matched-control group, phone calls by those using the service increased by 16.2%, compared with 29.9% for those who did not use KP HealthConnect.

Researchers expected younger patients to use the service because they are technologically savvy, but "it was the older folks, the 50 to 60 age group, these are the people with the highest propensity for chronic conditions" who "really seemed to jump at this," Terhilda Garrido, co-author of the study, said (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 7/13).



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