Thundermist is developing patient portal for EMRs

Taking the next step with electronic medical records, Thundermist Health Center is developing a patient portal that will allow people to access their medical files, learn about and manage chronic conditions such as diabetes, and communicate securely with doctors.
The project, supported by a $75,000 grant from the Rhode Island Foundation, is part of a new wave of technology initiatives that seek to maximize EMRs’ value by using them to identify at-risk populations, tailor programs to meet their needs, and engage them in their own care.
A few health care providers across the country have already set up patient portals, but they’re still relatively rare, said Laura Adams, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Quality Institute, which has led and coordinated health care IT initiatives in the state for years.
More portal projects are now in the works, Adams said, but Thundermist is likely to be the first to go live in Rhode Island, certainly with such extensive features and a large patient base.
“They could teach the rest of us so much about this,” Adams said. “Many people have a portal where you can go and maybe can do some scheduling or interact with the practice in some way, and those are helpful, but this is a much deeper engagement of patients.”
As a result, Adams said, the Thundermist portal is likely to yield valuable lessons about how patients respond to their EMRs.
For Thundermist, the patient portal is “the next logical step” in its adoption of EMRs, said president and CEO Maria Montanaro. The health center began piloting EMRs two years ago and has used them fully for about a year at all its facilities – in Woonsocket, West Warwick and Wakefield – which serve about 25,000 adults and children.
The portal is an added feature available on eClinicalWorks, the center’s current software and now the most widely used EMR in the state. The Rhode Island Foundation grant will cover about one third of the cost, but through a related project with the Quality Institute, the center will cover about half the price, Montanaro said.
Most of Thundermist’s patients are low-income, many of them uninsured or on RIte Care, the state’s Medicaid program for families. But while a few years ago that would’ve made them unlikely candidates for an online project – broadband Internet access was just not the norm – Montanaro said the center has surveyed patients and most now have easy Internet access, directly or through a public library or other means. For awhile now, Thundermist has been gathering e-mail addresses for its patients, Montanaro said, and it will be using those addresses to send out educational materials.
The portal itself will start small and with a narrow set of patients, she said – most likely groups such as diabetics, or people with high blood pressure, who could really benefit from extra attention and sustained interaction in-between visits.
One of the most useful traits of the EMR system, Montanaro said, is that it allows doctors to quickly identify people with a specific diagnosis or specific risk factors, and Thundermist is already working to expand services for some of those populations as part of the CSI-Rhode Island project (the Chronic Care Sustainability Initiative), which aims to develop “advanced medical homes” at primary care practices across the state.
“We’re doing more group visits, we’re doing more patient education, we’re communicating with our patients in whole new ways, and the patient portal will be a new tool in that practice transformation,” Montanaro said.
The first few features, she said, may be simple: access to selected information on the medical record, access to educational materials, and a way to contact providers.
In the long term, however, the potential is far greater. Not only could patients log their own blood pressure or glucose levels, for example, but in the future, they might be able to connect their glucometer directly to the system and transmit the values online.
Montanaro also said she expects Thundermist to offer “e-visits” at some point, now a rarity in most of the country – consultations done entirely online, in a secure environment, at a lower cost and without having to leave one’s home.
That project, funded by a $5 million federal grant, went live last year with a very limited scope. Patients across the state were encouraged to sign up, and if they did, some lab results and prescription data of theirs started being fed into the currentcare system.
The next step is to start connecting EMRs and linking providers who serve similar populations, and Thundermist will be part of that initiative, Montanaro said, doing a pilot program with Landmark Medical Center and others. &#8226