When it comes to health, information is as important as medicine — if not moreso.

Health care is most effective when regular doctor visits are coupled with learning about medical terms, pathologies, and healthy habits that allow patients to make their own informed decisions.

Our Health Resource Room does a great job of helping patients navigate the Internet for information relevant to their medical concerns. But health is a 24 hour concern — and patients’ ability to access information should not end when they walk out our door!

Our new “Patient Portal” allows us to do just this. Here at Bread for the City, we’ve implemented an electronic medical records system called eClinicalWorks. While going electronic comes with challenges (which merit their own whole series of blog posts), it also creates fantastic new possibilities like the Patient Portal. This technology is designed to bring people closer to both their doctors and their own health information.

A portal... to another dimension!

Here’s how the Patient Portal works: patients log in to a secure website, where they can view their lab results, request referrals or prescription refills, and contact providers with questions or concerns. Perhaps most exciting, the Patient Portal provides educational material that’s relevant to patients’ diagnoses.

There is a widespread public initiative to engage medical clinics and patients in ”meaningful use” of electronic health records for personal access. We think this is a good thing generally, but we also know all too well that even if we get there with technology, our patients might not. Because the reality is that Internet access and even computer technology itself is a major hurdle for many of our clients.

So while we are excited to deploy the Portal for our clients in the coming month, we know that implementing the technology is just the first step. The real work comes in providing any and all support that they may need to take full advantage of this new technology. Therefore, we are directing people to our Health Resource Room to get signed up with an email account and to our regular computer literacy courses to bolster their basics on stuff like using keyboard and mouse.

We will be hosting trainings and discussions on technology this Saturday, November 5th at our Discovering Technology Fair at Bread for the City Northwest. (Read our blog post here, or visit the Broadband Bridge website to RSVP.) Come talk with us about Health Information Technology like this Patient Portal!