Without a doubt patient engagement is one of the more important trends in healthcare and health IT right now. Over the past few years the tools that look to enable patient engagement between providers and patients have changed markedly. It is important to note, however, that the tools themselves are just a small part of the story — they can go a long way toward improving patient engagement, though. The drivers of the patient engagement buzz are varied, but one big one is the federal government’s Office of the National Coordinator’s (ONC) Meaningful Use (MU) program, which is beginning to include requirements for very basic patient engagement services. 

ONC’s MU Stage II requirements include at least three patient engagement related deliverables of providers. To meet Stage II, providers must give patients clinical summaries after each visit. They must use electronic secure messaging to communicate with patients on relevant health information with a minimum of 5 percent of their patients during the review period. They must also provide patients with the ability to view online, download and transmit information about a hospital admission and give them access to any health information about that patient the providers receives — within four days of receiving it.

Read more: http://mobihealthnews.com/29985/in-depth-a-brief-history-of-digital-patient-engagement-tools/

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