Although health centers have more options than ever to use electronic tools to engage patients in care, selecting those that most effectively further the goal of providing high-quality and efficient patient care is challenging. In this explainer, we consider three types of tools that health centers may invest in: Remote Patient Monitoring, Electronic Patient Engagement, and mHealth Personal Apps. By understanding what they are and how they are implemented, their advantages and disadvantages, and how they align with value-based care and the clinical workflow, health centers can choose the suite of tools that best serve their patient needs.

This Excel-based scoring rubric is intended to be used by health centers to assess electronic patient engagement tools (like automated outreach SMS platforms) to determine which tool is most likely to meet the health center's needs.

In the spring of 2020, HITEQ and several PCA and HCCN colleagues developed a survey to gather detailed information on health center experiences with a variety of EPE tools and included questions about product functions, strengths & weaknesses, cost, integration with EHRs, ease of implementation, and quality of vendor support. The results of that survey, as well as interviews and demonstrations are captured in this EPE Tool Inventory.

The introduction of electronic personal health records (PHR) systems, and the patient portals used to provide patients access to those records, into the fabric of the U.S. healthcare system provides a major opportunity to encourage positive health management practices, such as chronic disease management and increased care plan adherence, through greater engagement of the patient.  Unfortunately, there is still a broad gap between the effective use of PHR technologies where advanced health information services are perhaps most needed, especially within the underserved communities supported by community health centers. This guide provides health centers with an adoption framework that can be used to assess the goals and methods for deploying electronic patient engagement services.

This Chilmark Research report discusses challenges to current patient portal systems which may help health center leadership better understand why or why not they are encountering issues when trying to effectively engage their clients with patient portal systems.

This video may also provide insights to various technologies that health centers may consider adopting to further achieve patient activation and engagement goals.