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The United States government is encouraging physicians to adopt patient portals-secure websites that allow patients to access their health information. For patient portals to recognize their full potential and improve patient care, health care providers' acceptance and encouragement of their use will be essential. However, little is known about provider concerns or views of patient portals. We conducted this qualitative study to determine how administrators, clinic staff, and health care providers at practices serving a lower income adult population viewed patient portals in terms of their potential benefit, areas of concern, and hopes for the future. We performed in-depth interviews between October 2013 and June 2014 with 20 clinic personnel recruited from health centers in four North Carolina counties. Trained study personnel conducted individual interviews following an interviewer guide to elicit perceptions of the benefits and disadvantages of patient portals. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Research team members reviewed transcribed interviews for major themes to construct a coding dictionary. Two researchers then coded each transcript with any coding discrepancies resolved through discussion. The interviews revealed that clinic personnel viewed patient portals as a mandated product that had potential to improve communication and enhance information sharing. However, they expressed many concerns including portals' potential to generate more work, confuse patients, alienate non-users, and increase health disparities. Clinic personnel expected few older and disadvantaged patients to use a portal. Given that clinic personnel have significant concerns about portals' unintended consequences, their uptake and impact on care may be limited. Future studies should examine ways portals can be implemented in practices to address providers' concerns and meet the needs of vulnerable populations.

Electronic patient portals have become common and offer many potential benefits for patients' self-management of health care. These benefits could be especially important for older adult patients dealing with significant chronic illness, many of whom have caregivers, such as a spouse, adult child, or other family member or friend, who help with health care management. Patient portals commonly contain large amounts of personal information, including diagnoses, health histories, medications, specialist appointments, lab results, and billing and insurance information. Some health care systems provide proxy accounts for caregivers to access a portal on behalf of a patient. It is not well known how much and in what way caregivers are using patient portals on behalf of patients and whether patients see any information disclosure risks associated with such access. The objective of this study was to examine how older adult patients perceive the benefits and risks of proxy patient portal access by their caregivers. We conducted semistructured interviews with 10 older adult patients with chronic illness. We asked them about their relationship with their caregivers, their use of their patient portal, their caregiver's use of the portal, and their perceptions about the benefits and risks of their caregiver's use of the portals. We also asked them about their comfort level with caregivers having access to information about a hypothetical diagnosis of a stigmatized condition. Two investigators conducted a thematic analysis of the qualitative data. All patients identified caregivers. Some had given caregivers access to their portals, in all cases by sharing log-in credentials, rather than by setting up an official proxy account. Patients generally saw benefits in their caregivers having access to the information and functions provided by the portal. Patients generally reported that they would be uncomfortable with caregivers learning of stigmatized conditions and also with caregivers (except spouses) accessing financial billing information. Patients share their electronic patient portal credentials with caregivers to receive the benefits of those caregivers having access to important medical information but are unaware of all the information those caregivers can access. Better portal design could alleviate these unwanted information disclosures.

Background Over the past decade, many well-resourced health plans and systems surpassed the 80% colorectal cancer screening rate goal, while lower resource environments such as federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) lag behind. FQHCs in rural areas are especially challenged with limited resources to reach diverse patients who often lack consistent engagement with clinical care. mHealth solutions, like mPATH ® CRC, can address these challenges by automating tasks and expanding patient outreach. This platform identifies patients due for CRC screening, educates them on the commonly used screening tests, and helps them select their best option. This paper describes protocols for a study that will implement mPATH ® CRC in FQHCs using a novel outreach strategy that engages patients outside of regular appointments. Methods Following a type 1 hybrid effectiveness-implementation design, we will conduct a patient-level randomized controlled trial (RCT) to assess the effectiveness of mPATH ® -CRC over a three-year period. Embedded within the RCT, we will utilize a convergent, mixed methods design for evaluation of the implementation process. The planned trial sample will include 1000 patients who are at average CRC risk and due for screening. Participants will be randomized 1:1 to receive either usual care or outreach through mPATH ® -CRC that includes text messages about screening, multi-media education on screening options, and either mailed FIT or assistance to schedule a colonoscopy. The primary outcome is completion of any CRC screening test within six months of randomization. We will also use surveys and interviews with FQHC personnel to explore integration of mPATH ® -CRC into clinical workflows and sustainability challenges. Discussion This trial will generate insights into the effectiveness and implementation of a digital CRC screening intervention in resource-limited FQHCs. Findings will inform strategies for optimizing outreach components and scaling implementation in similar settings. Trial registration This trial was registered on June 4, 2024, at ClinicalTrials.gov (identifier NCT06441487).

Background Screening for colorectal cancer (CRC) is widely recommended but underused, even though CRC is the third most diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in the USA. The mPATH™ program is an iPad-based application designed to identify patients due for CRC screening, educate them on the commonly used screening tests, and help them select their best option, with the goal of increasing CRC screening rates. Methods The mPATH™ program consists of questions asked of all adult patients at check-in (mPATH™-CheckIn), as well as a module specific for patients due for CRC screening (mPATH™-CRC). In this study, the mPATH™ program is evaluated through a Type III hybrid implementation-effectiveness design. Specifically, the study consists of three parts: (1) a cluster-randomized controlled trial of primary care clinics comparing a “high touch” evidence-based implementation strategy with a “low touch” implementation strategy; (2) a nested pragmatic study evaluating the effectiveness of mPATH-CRC™ on completion of CRC screening; and (3) a mixed-methods study evaluating factors that facilitate or impede the maintenance of interventions like mPATH-CRC™. The primary objective is to compare the proportion of patients aged 50–74 who are eligible for CRC screening who complete mPATH™-CRC in the 6th month following implementation between the “high touch” and “low touch” implementation strategies. Effectiveness of mPATH™-CRC is evaluated by comparing the proportion who complete CRC screening within 16 weeks of their visit to the clinic between a pre-implementation cohort (8 months before implementation) and a post-implementation cohort (8 months after implementation). Discussion This study will provide data on both the implementation of the mPATH™ program and its effectiveness in improving screening rates for CRC. In addition, this work has the potential to have an even broader impact by identifying strategies to support the sustained use of other similar technology-based primary care interventions. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03843957. Registered on 18 February 2019.

Patient portals can improve patient communication with providers, provide patients with greater health information access, and help improve patient decision making, if they are used. Because research on factors facilitating and limiting patient portal utilization has not been conceptually based, no leverage points have been indicated for improving utilization. The primary objective for this analysis was to use a conceptual framework to determine potentially modifiable factors affecting patient portal utilization by older adults (aged 55 years and older) who receive care at clinics that serve low income and ethnically diverse communities. The secondary objective was to delineate how patient portal utilization is associated with perceived usefulness and usability. Patients from one urban and two rural clinics serving low income patients were recruited and completed interviewer-administered questionnaires on patient portal utilization. A total of 200 ethnically diverse patients completed questionnaires, of which 41 (20.5%) patients reported utilizing portals. Education, social support, and frequent Internet utilization improve the odds of patient portal utilization; receiving health care at a rural clinic decreases the odds of portal utilization. Leverage points to address disparities in patient portal utilization include providing training for older adults in patient portal utilization, involving spouses or other care partners in this training, and making information technology access available at public places in rural and urban communities.

Most patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer will survive for at least 5 years; thus, engaging patients to optimize their health will likely improve outcomes. Clinical guidelines recommend patients receive a comprehensive care plan (CP) when transitioning from active treatment to survivorship, which includes support for ongoing symptoms and recommended healthy behaviors. Yet, cancer care providers find this guideline difficult to implement. Future directions for survivorship care planning include enhancing information technology support for developing personalized CPs, using CPs to facilitate self-management, and assessing CPs in clinical settings. We aimed to develop an electronic tool for colorectal cancer follow-up care (CFC) planning. Incorporating inputs from health care professionals and patient stakeholders is fundamental to the successful integration of any tool into the clinical workflow. Thus, we followed the Integrate, Design, Assess, and Share (IDEAS) framework to adapt an existing application for stroke care planning (COMPASS-CP) to meet the needs of colorectal cancer survivors (COMPASS-CP CFC). Constructs from the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) guided our approach. We completed this work in 3 phases: (1) gathering qualitative feedback from stakeholders about the follow-up CP generation design and workflow; (2) adapting algorithms and resource data sources needed to generate a follow-up CP; and (3) optimizing the usability of the adapted prototype of COMPASS-CP CFC. We also quantitatively measured usability (target average score ≥70; range 0-100), acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility. In the first phase, health care professionals (n=7), and patients and caregivers (n=7) provided qualitative feedback on COMPASS-CP CFC that informed design elements such as selection, interpretation, and clinical usefulness of patient-reported measures. In phase 2, we built a minimal viable product of COMPASS-CP CFC. This tool generated CPs based on the needs identified by patient-completed measures (including validated patient-reported outcomes) and electronic health record data, which were then matched with resources by zip code and preference to support patients' self-management. Elements of the CFIR assessed revealed that most health care professionals believed the tool would serve patients' needs and had advantages. In phase 3, the average System Usability Scale score was above our target score for health care professionals (n=5; mean 71.0, SD 15.2) and patients (n=5; mean 95.5, SD 2.1). Participants also reported high levels of acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility. Additional CFIR-informed feedback, such as desired format for training, will inform future studies. The data collected in this study support the initial usability of COMPASS-CP CFC and will inform the next steps for implementation in clinical care. COMPASS-CP CFC has the potential to streamline the implementation of personalized CFC planning to enable systematic access to resources that will support self-management. Future research is needed to test the impact of COMPASS-CP CFC on patient health outcomes.

National organizations recommend that medical schools train students in the social determinants of health. To develop and evaluate a longitudinal health equity curriculum that was integrated into third-year clinical clerkships and provided experiential learning in partnership with community organizations. This longitudinal cohort study was conducted from June 2017 to October 2020 to evaluate the association of the curriculum with medical students' self-reported knowledge of social determinants of health and confidence working with underserved populations. Students from 1 large medical school in the southeastern US were included. Students in the class of 2019 and class of 2020 were surveyed at baseline (before the start of their third year), end of the third year, and graduation. The class of 2018 (No curriculum) was surveyed at graduation to serve as a control. Data analysis was conducted from June to September 2020. The curriculum began with a health equity simulation followed by a series of modules. The class of 2019 participated in the simulation and piloted the initial 3 modules (pilot), and the class of 2020 participated in the simulation and the full 9 modules (full). A linear mixed-effects model was used to evaluate the change in the self-reported knowledge and confidence scores over time (potential scores ranged from 0 to 32, with higher scores indicating higher self-reported knowledge and confidence working with underserved populations). In secondary analyses, a Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted to compare graduation scores between the no, pilot, and full curriculum classes. A total of 314 students (160 women [51.0%], 205 [65.3%] non-Hispanic White participants) completed at least 1 survey, including 125 students in the pilot, 121 in the full, and 68 in the no curriculum classes. One hundred forty-one students (44.9%) were interested in primary care. Total self-reported knowledge and confidence scores increased between baseline and end of clerkship (15.4 vs 23.7, P = .001) and baseline and graduation (15.4 vs 23.7, P = .001) for the pilot and full curriculum classes. Total scores at graduation were higher for the pilot curriculum (median, 24.0; interquartile range [IQR], 21.0-27.0; P = .001) and full curriculum classes (median, 23.0; IQR, 20.0-26.0; P = .01) compared with the no curriculum class (median, 20.5; IQR, 16.25-24.0). In this cohort study of medical students, a dedicated health equity curriculum was associated with a significant improvement in students' self-reported knowledge of social determinants of health and confidence working with underserved populations.

Recent advances in mobile technologies have created new opportunities to reach broadly into populations that are vulnerable to health disparities. However, mobile health (mHealth) strategies could paradoxically increase health disparities, if low socioeconomic status individuals lack the technical or literacy skills needed to navigate mHealth programs. The aim of this study was to determine whether patients from vulnerable populations could successfully navigate and complete an mHealth patient decision aid. We analyzed usability data from a randomized controlled trial of an iPad program designed to promote colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. The trial was conducted in six primary care practices and enrolled 450 patients, aged 50-74 years, who were due for CRC screening. The iPad program included a self-survey and randomly displayed either a screening decision aid or a video about diet and exercise. We measured participant ability to complete the program without assistance and participant-rated program usability. Two-thirds of the participants (305/450) were members of a vulnerable population (limited health literacy, annual income < US $20,000, or black race). Over 92% (417/450) of the participants rated the program highly on all three usability items (90.8% for vulnerable participants vs 96.6% for nonvulnerable participants, P=.006). Only 6.9% (31/450) of the participants needed some assistance to complete the program. In multivariable logistic regression, being a member of a vulnerable population was not associated with needing assistance. Only older age, less use of text messaging (short message service, SMS), and lack of Internet use predicted needing assistance. Individuals who are vulnerable to health disparities can successfully use well-designed mHealth programs. Future research should investigate whether mHealth interventions can reduce health disparities.

Background: Although effective mental health treatments exist, the ability to match individuals to optimal treatments is poor, and timely assessment of response is difficult. One reason for these challenges is the lack of objective measurement of psychiatric symptoms. Sensors and active tasks recorded by smartphones provide a low-burden, low-cost, and scalable way to capture real-world data from patients that could augment clinical decision-making and move the field of mental health closer to measurement-based care. Objective: This study tests the feasibility of a fully remote study on individuals with self-reported depression using an Android-based smartphone app to collect subjective and objective measures associated with depression severity. The goals of this pilot study are to develop an engaging user interface for high task adherence through user-centered design; test the quality of collected data from passive sensors; start building clinically relevant behavioral measures (features) from passive sensors and active inputs; and preliminarily explore connections between these features and depression severity. Methods: A total of 600 participants were asked to download the study app to join this fully remote, observational 12-week study. The app passively collected 20 sensor data streams (eg, ambient audio level, location, and inertial measurement units), and participants were asked to complete daily survey tasks, weekly voice diaries, and the clinically validated Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) self-survey. Pairwise correlations between derived behavioral features (eg, weekly minutes spent at home) and PHQ-9 were computed. Using these behavioral features, we also constructed an elastic net penalized multivariate logistic regression model predicting depressed versus nondepressed PHQ-9 scores (ie, dichotomized PHQ-9). Results: A total of 415 individuals logged into the app. Over the course of the 12-week study, these participants completed 83.35% (4151/4980) of the PHQ-9s. Applying data sufficiency rules for minimally necessary daily and weekly data resulted in 3779 participant-weeks of data across 384 participants. Using a subset of 34 behavioral features, we found that 11 features showed a significant (P<.001 Benjamini-Hochberg adjusted) Spearman correlation with weekly PHQ-9, including voice diary–derived word sentiment and ambient audio levels. Restricting the data to those cases in which all 34 behavioral features were present, we had available 1013 participant-weeks from 186 participants. The logistic regression model predicting depression status resulted in a 10-fold cross-validated mean area under the curve of 0.656 (SD 0.079). Conclusions: This study finds a strong proof of concept for the use of a smartphone-based assessment of depression outcomes. Behavioral features derived from passive sensors and active tasks show promising correlations with a validated clinical measure of depression (PHQ-9). Future work is needed to increase scale that may permit the construction of more complex (eg, nonlinear) predictive models and better handle data missingness.

A sizeable proportion of prediabetes and diabetes cases among adults in the United States remain undiagnosed. Patient-facing clinical decision support (CDS) tools that leverage electronic health records (EHRs) have the potential to increase diabetes screening. Given the widespread mobile phone ownership across diverse groups, text messages present a viable mode for delivering alerts directly to patients. The use of unsolicited text messages to offer hemoglobin A (HbA ) screening has not yet been studied. It is imperative to gauge perceptions of \"cold texts\" to ensure that information and language are optimized to promote engagement with text messages that affect follow-through with health behaviors. This study aims to gauge the perceptions of and receptiveness to text messages to inform content that would facilitate engagement with text messages intended to initiate a mobile health (mHealth) intervention for targeted screening. Messages were designed to invite those not already diagnosed with diabetes to make a decision to take part in HbA screening and walk them through the steps required to perform the behavior based solely on an automated text exchange. In total, 6 focus groups were conducted at Wake Forest Baptist Health (WFBH) between September 2019 and February 2020. The participants were adult patients without diabetes who had completed an in-person visit at the Family and Community Medicine Clinic within the previous year. We displayed a series of text messages and asked the participants to react to the message content and suggest improvements. Content was deductively coded with respect to the Health Belief Model (HBM) and inductively coded to identify other emergent themes that could potentially impact engagement with text messages. Participants (N=36) were generally receptive to the idea of receiving a text-based alert for HbA screening. Plain language, personalization, and content, which highlighted perceived benefits over perceived susceptibility and perceived severity, were important to participants' understanding of and receptiveness to messages. The patient-physician relationship emerged as a recurring theme in which patients either had a desire or held an assumption that their provider would be working behind the scenes throughout each step of the process. Participants needed further clarification to understand the steps involved in following through with HbA screening and receiving results. Our findings suggest that patients may be receptive to text messages that alert them to a risk of having an elevated HbA in direct-to-patient alerts that use cold texting. Using plain and positive language, integrating elements of personalization, and defining new processes clearly were identified by participants as modifiable content elements that could act as facilitators that would help overcome barriers to engagement with these messages. A patient's relationship with their provider and the financial costs associated with texts and screening may affect receptiveness and engagement in this process.