Patient Portal Experiences in Pain

[drusso]

How are people setting up their patient portals for meaningful use in Pain Medicine? Are you letting patients request refills through the portal? View UDS results? View fluoro images? Instant messaging and email?

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[lobelsteve]

None of it. Our portal through allscripts has a way of not showing up on the charts.

 

[clubdeac]

Our hospital allows all of it. It’s terrible

 

[Agast]

I forward all messages to my MAs and have them call the patient back. I never respond directly with email because I don’t want to encourage after-hour email freak outs (which happened once - opened my laptop on Monday morning to 4 essay-style messages from the same person). We have an on call doctor if anything is really that urgent.

 

[cowboydoc]

How are people setting up their patient portals for meaningful use in Pain Medicine? Are you letting patients request refills through the portal? View UDS results? View fluoro images? Instant messaging and email?

My system let's them message, now let's them see notes and rad results. It's messy. Occasionally convenient, but a few patients blowing me up with messages almost daily is a huge time suck. Have staff respond to all!

 

[hyperalgesia]

Tried it in private office, had similar experience as above - there needs to be some buffer between patient and doc.

At hospital practice, patient portal has a tiered response structure. First to primary care RN, can be escalated to PCP, can be escalated to Pain RN, and about once a year gets escalated to me. This is because I don't write for opioids. Otherwise it would be a weekly drama.

 

[Ferrismonk]

My portal allows messaging, I prefer it for patients because it discourages them calling. I tell them 24 hours (M-F) for a reply. My MA or office manager handle 99% of it. I handle pain questions, but often it is simply referring the message to my office manager telling her to contact the patient and schedule an OV to discuss. I don't get paid for portal message time. Something simple I'll handle and can escribe a dosepak or something if needed.

They can request refills which if appropriate is no problem. Usually I handle this in office though and I get very few refill requests from patients. Pharmacies are a different story....

I publish consistent UDS and imaging to the portal and all my notes are theoretically there. I don't publish inconsistent UDS or images from procedures.

 

[Ducttape]

I get all messages. they usually come through the MA/nurses first.

I respond to them, but not until after the day is done and before 5:30, when I go home. if I don't get it done then, then I do it in the morning.

refills go through nurses first.

I don't publish or release any UDS results. just so that that information does not get out to anyone else, like a family member looking at the phone...