Web Portal Use by the Numbers

With our first year of web portal use well behind us I started looking for practical ways to begin mining some data to get some basic statistical observations regarding patient use of web portal.  As with all new undertakings in health IT this was far more difficult and cumbersome than it should have been.  Nonetheless I got a few interesting observations documented over the past couple of days.  I did not do an exhausting review but I don’t think data like this exist anywhere else.

I was curious about what proportion of our network’s new patients have used the web portal over the past 6 months.  Overall 22% of our new patients used the web portal for clinical data entry.  This differs significantly from my subjective observation that about half of my new patients were using the portal; this data includes all 19 of our network physicians, not just my own.  I am in the process of looking at my patients only.

 

The breakdown by age is here – the first table  – web portal figure 1

 

Portal use is very steady at around 25% through age 65 years.  Use among pediatric patients shows parents are just as willing to use the portal for their children as they are for themselves.  It is reasonable to expect portal use to drop with increasing age but I didn’t expect 65 year olds to be using the portal as much as 25 year olds.  Portal use among patients in their 70’s and 80’s is quite respectable.  The bump in use in patients over 90 years of age is interesting but likely to be a statistical illusion due to the very small absolute numbers in those age brackets.

 

The second table shows the same data expressed as raw numbers rather than percentages.  All our new patients, regardless of portal use, tend to be from age 40 to 70 years.

 

 

About the author

Dr. Michael Koriwchak

Dr. Michael J. Koriwchak received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1988. He completed both his Internship in General Surgery and Residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Koriwchak continued at Vanderbilt for a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice. He is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
After training Dr. Koriwchak moved to Atlanta in 1995 to become one of the original physicians in Ear, Nose and Throat of Georgia. He has built a thriving practice in Laryngology, Care of the Professional Voice, Thyroid/Parathyroid Surgery, Endoscopic Sinus Surgery and General Otolaryngology. A singer himself, many of his patients are people who depend on their voice for their careers, including some well-known entertainers. Dr. Koriwchak has also performed thousands of thyroid, parathyroid and head and neck cancer operations.
Dr. Koriwchak has been working with information technology since 1977. While an undergraduate at Bucknell University he taught a computer-programming course. In medical school he wrote his own software for his laboratory research. In the 1990’s he adapted generic forms software to create one the first electronic prescription applications. Soon afterward he wrote his own chart note templates using visual BASIC script. In 2003 he became the physician champion for ENT of Georgia’s EMR implementation project. This included not only design and implementation strategy but also writing code. In 2008 the EMR implementation earned the e-Technology award from the Medical Association of Georgia.
With 7 years EMR experience, 18 years in private medical practice and over 35 years of IT experience, Dr. Koriwchak seeks opportunities to merge the information technology and medical communities, bringing information technology to health care.

   

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