What is health IT literacy? How is it different from health literacy?

Health information technology (health IT) literacy is a person's ability to effectively find, understand, and use health technology across health and healthcare settings. It is related to but distinct from health literacy, which is a person's ability to find, understand, use, and communicate health information to make informed decisions about their health and healthcare. ^{7 8}

Health literacy varies with a person's role in the healthcare system, such as the clinician or patient. The older adult patient with multiple chronic conditions will have more complex health literacy needs than the young adult patient who is in good health. The adult parent will have different health literacy needs than the pediatric patient. Health literacy even varies among healthcare professionals, such as between clinicians, electronic health record (EHR) developers, and front desk staff. It also varies with use cases, such as cancer care, digital quality measures, and patient-generated health data.

For the patient, caregiver, or family member, health literacy includes understanding basic concepts of health and health conditions, understanding and following written instructions such as medication labels and discharge instructions, and using the healthcare system. Clinicians and staff, in turn, must take each individual's health literacy into consideration when communicating with patients and caregivers, which often include family caregivers.

Similarly, health IT literacy for patients today includes understanding patient portals, how to use them, and how different patient portals organize and display health information of interest. Health IT literacy also involves understanding the evolving contribution of patient-generated health data through portals and devices and the ability to work with and synthesize digital health information across multiple portals to understand one's health status and longitudinal shared care plan.

Like health literacy, health IT literacy varies with a person's role in the healthcare system and the particular use case. For the clinician, it includes finding, understanding, and using EHRs, medical devices, electronic clinical decision supports (e.g., cancer screenings, vaccine schedules, and medication management), and telemedicine tools. For the patient, it includes finding, understanding, and using patient portals, health apps, wearables and devices, and telemedicine tools.

How does health IT literacy affect your practice?

Health IT literacy may affect different practices in different ways depending on characteristics like patient population, geographic setting, or specialty. A rural practice may lack broadband access, making some health IT inapplicable (such as telemedicine) and making experience with alternative kinds of health IT (such as telephone visits or emails with photo attachments in lieu of telemedicine) a strength. A practice serving patients whose first language is not English will need to provide both health information and health technology in the languages its patients use so they can understand and use the information and technology. A diabetes practice might need health IT literacy to help its patients successfully use continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps, while a pediatrician might depend more on the parent's or parent proxy's health IT literacy than the child's health IT literacy.

While health IT literacy is distinct from health literacy, health IT literacy and the use of health IT affect and can promote health literacy as well. For example, patient portals that show long-term health data help people understand how their health has changed over time. Clinical decision support tools integrated within EHRs help clinicians have a deeper understanding of relevant diagnoses and interventions. Your practice should be thinking about health IT literacy from both the clinician's and the patient's and caregiver's perspectives.

Consider how health IT literacy impacts your practice and patients from the very beginning of any health IT initiative — starting with design and moving through procurement, implementation, testing, training, daily workflows, ongoing monitoring, and evaluation. Considering health IT literacy from the beginning will be more efficient and cost-effective than attempting to retrofit solutions after problems have been uncovered in practice, with accompanying risks to quality and patient safety.

This chapter explores the importance and benefits of health IT literacy, as well as best practices and resources to help clinicians and patients use health information and communication technologies to improve care. It illustrates how health IT literacy in everyday practice can lead to better, more efficient solutions and streamlined workflows, while poor health IT literacy can increase burdens, inefficiency, and costs.

As many as half of U.S. adults have limited literacy skills, and even more — up to 9 in 10 — have limited health literacy skills. ⁹ Think of limited health IT literacy in the same way. Designing for limited-literacy users has a powerful effect: It broadens access to health information and health IT for all users.

Understanding the many facets of health IT literacy can help you integrate it effectively for both staff and patients. You don't need to achieve high health IT literacy across all of these components from the outset, but awareness can help you plan for how best to achieve health IT literacy in each phase. Keep in mind the following areas to understand, promote, and fully leverage health IT literacy.

User groups or roles

Health IT literacy varies depending on a person's role in the healthcare system. A clinician is expected to be proficient with the EHR, while patients and family caregivers may not be as familiar. Conversely, patients may be more comfortable and literate using patient portals than some clinicians. To support patient engagement and access, at least 1 person on the healthcare team with a patient-facing role should be familiar with the patient portal (i.e., super users). These super users could be the clinicians but could also be other members of the healthcare team. They should know how to use it, be able to answer patient questions during visits, and understand the portal's limitations or tradeoffs from the patient's perspective.

Within a single practice, health IT literacy can also differ by role. A clinician may be less skilled than a front desk staffer in using the appointment system, while neither is likely to match an EHR developer or informaticist in detecting bias in scheduling algorithms. ¹⁰

Content

Health IT literacy also varies with the type of content and how it is displayed in health IT systems. For example, you may see a smooth, interoperable referral exchange, while an EHR developer or informaticist sees the underlying semantic codes (such as LOINC or SNOMED CT) and the FHIR® standards enabling that exchange. Similarly, while clinicians may want access to the full range of relevant clinical content, some patient portals present patients with a summary designed to match their literacy level and information needs. However, there is still progress to be made to ensure that all portals account for all literacy levels.

Use cases

A use case describes the steps someone takes to use a system to achieve a specific goal. In health IT, examples of use cases include using a patient portal to schedule a follow-up appointment, complete a family health history questionnaire, or upload personal health indicators like blood pressure. Health IT literacy varies with the health IT and skills needed to achieve the goal of the use case. For instance, the health IT skills required for cancer care are not the same as those needed to calculate and report digital quality measures. And both differ from the health IT literacy skills that patients and their clinicians need to collect, understand, and submit patient-generated health data. While there may be some overlap, the specific demands vary.

Technology

Health IT literacy can also depend on the specific technology. For example, a clinician may be proficient with EHRs but unfamiliar with certain medical devices or health apps. Likewise, a patient may use a wearable device daily yet have little to no literacy with EHR systems. The required skills shift with the technology in use.

Health IT literacy is multifaceted. Your patients and staff do not have to be literate across every aspect of health IT. Rather, different members of your team will and should have health IT literacy in their respective and overlapping spheres. Where the patient or caregiver interacts with the clinical setting, the health IT literacy of the patient, clinicians, and staff should be considered to facilitate effective patient engagement.

Health IT literacy can support your practice and enhance patient and caregiver health literacy by:

• Improving understanding and effective use of health IT
• Building knowledge of health information and its limitations
• Building knowledge of health IT and its limitations
• Strengthening real-time engagement with patients through tools such as online scheduling, secure messaging, reminders, educational resources, medication refill requests, forms, and telehealth
• Enabling patients and family caregivers to support care at home, in the community, while traveling, and in other settings — improving outcomes and reducing practice workload
• Enhancing the clarity, usability, and impact of health information to support health literacy

Each of these benefits can contribute to improving health outcomes and relieving practice load. On the other hand, poor health IT literacy increases practice burden, inefficiency, and costs. When clinicians, staff, or patients cannot effectively find, understand, and use relevant health IT, mistakes can be made, data can be mis-entered or omitted, and health outcomes can be affected. The resulting friction and potential misunderstandings can affect patients' ability to use health IT to increase involvement in their care.

Health IT literacy can affect patient engagement positively or negatively across the different components of health IT literacy listed above. To increase patient engagement, consider how health IT literacy shapes every stage of a patient's or caregiver's experience — from accessing technology to understanding and acting on the information it provides.

Users and roles

Knowing that patients and caregivers have differing levels of health IT literacy for various reasons, consider how patients and caregivers access and use health IT and design for those differing levels. Tailor instructions, education, and training to the different needs of particular patient populations.

Use cases

Similarly, clinicians, specialists, and patients and their caregivers will have differing levels of health IT literacy. Use cases range from a healthy child's routine checkup to an adult managing multiple chronic conditions. Think about how patients and caregivers need to use health IT differently depending on the situation and provide appropriate support and training accordingly to ensure health IT literacy.

Content

Patients and caregivers can gain a better understanding of their health through the content and information available to them, so it's important to provide clear, user-friendly content that they can easily access and understand. Different types of health IT — such as portals, educational materials, and telehealth platforms — and the content within them may each require specific health IT literacy skills. Consider the content your patients use and ensure it matches their abilities and preferences. This will help them use technology and information confidently and effectively.

Technology

Patients and caregivers need tailored, user-centered interfaces that they can access, use, and understand. Specific types of health IT — like devices, wearables, remote monitoring, and telehealth visits — might each require a user to have health IT literacy skills that are specific to the technology. Consider the types of health IT patients are using and what health IT literacy they need to be successfully engaged.

Availability and access

Not all health IT is equally available, and not everyone can fully use what is available. These gaps — often called “digital divides” — show up in many ways. For example, the Federal Communications Commission tracks broadband capacity, which is needed to access services like telehealth, and finds major differences across U.S. counties, especially in rural and Tribal areas. ¹¹ As of 2020, only about 41.5% of people in the United States had broadband internet. ¹² And even when relevant health IT is available, it may not be provided in the languages patients need or may be incompatible with assistive technologies, creating barriers alongside issues like utility insecurity. When planning for patient engagement, consider whether the health IT is truly available and accessible to patients and caregivers.

Usability

Even when health IT, such as patient portals, mobile apps, and remote monitoring devices, is available and accessible, it may still be difficult for patients to understand and use. An analysis of the 2022 Health Information National Trends Survey data found that 53% of participants reported it was “not very easy” to understand the health information in their online medical record or patient portal. ¹³ Barriers can stem from many factors, such as design choices made from the vendor's or clinician's perspective rather than the patient's. For better patient engagement, assess whether the technology is truly usable for each individual, considering the diversity of patients and caregivers.

Using best practices will help you promote health IT literacy both within your clinical setting and with your patients. The best practices and resources below build upon and incorporate the 5 principles outlined above to aid health IT literacy and patient engagement.

Evaluation

Take steps to evaluate how health IT literacy can help improve your practice.

• For a comprehensive resource from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, see Health Literacy Online: A Guide to Simplifying the User Experience.
• For a global resource, see the Digital Health Literacy Toolkit prepared by the Global Digital Health Partnership's Clinical and Human Engagement Work Stream. This toolkit was designed to support settings and individuals without significant experience in developing health IT literacy. Module 4 - Checklists and Considerations [PDF — 707 KB] may be especially helpful.

Integrated design

Involve diverse users in the initial design of user interfaces and workflows of health IT to increase both patient engagement and health IT literacy. If you build it with them, they will already be engaged and have health IT literacy. Remember, health IT literacy varies widely across users and settings, so be sure the design process considers these differences and includes the spectrum of users.

Unified implementation

Connect implementation and uptake of health IT across clinical and patient settings to boost health IT literacy across both sectors of the ecosystem. Changing health IT in one sector without considering the implications for the other can create unnecessary burdens and lead to costly adjustments. For example, as electronic health records and health systems have turned increasingly to the use of AI algorithms, bias in some AI algorithms has produced disparities in patient access and outcomes, highlighting the importance of testing for disparities and bias before implementation, and integrating procedures for monitoring and reporting such consequences for correction.

Testing, training, and monitoring

Conduct appropriate real-world testing in advance.

• Before procurement and during implementation and use, ask vendors if they have tested and validated the health IT for health IT literacy in clinical and patient-facing settings wherever relevant. Ask to see quantitative and qualitative results of real-world testing.
• Undertake initial real-world testing of patient portals, health applications, devices, and other patient-facing interfaces to match patients' and caregivers' levels of health IT literacy — and regularly monitor and assess health IT literacy thereafter.

Schedule regular workforce trainings on how to use health IT and how to mitigate the limitations of health IT, as well as tailored trainings for any minor or major updates. Consider assigning a health IT literacy champion to help flag health IT literacy issues so that you can address them proactively.

Regularly measuring and monitoring health IT use and trends as ecosystems, conditions, and patient populations change will help you consistently promote health IT literacy.

Resources

• Patient engagement: For insights from a national survey of consumers and patients, see Engaging Patients and Families: How Consumers Value and Use Health IT [PDF — 1,761 KB].
• Patient access: For resources on patient access to and use of their digital health records, see Get It, Check It, Use It: The Guide to Getting & Using Your Health Records.
• Digital content: For structuring, writing, and formatting digital health content for web- and app-based health tools to improve health literacy and health IT literacy, see Section 4: Create Actionable Content from Health Literacy Online: A Guide to Simplifying the User Experience.
• Language access: In the U.S., over 21% of people ages 5 and older speak a language other than English — such as Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, or Arabic — at home. Around 8% do not speak English very well. For insights about helping patients and family caregivers with access to health IT in languages other than English, see Spanish-Speaking Parents' Experiences Accessing Academic Medical Center Care: Barriers, Facilitators and Technology Use, including Table 6. Even initial awareness of your practice's health IT and its benefits may depend on communicating that availability in the various languages your communities and patients use.
• Health IT navigator: For insights about how an internal health IT champion can help — as dedicated positions in larger practices or as an assigned job duty among smaller practices — see Standardising the role of a digital navigator in behavioural health: a systematic review and Landscape Assessment of Digital Navigation in the California Safety Net [PDF — 3.4 MB]. Such navigators can also help work around digital divides.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an increasingly important part of health IT, bringing new health IT literacy considerations. Clinicians, staff, caregivers, and patients should understand the basics of AI's benefits, limitations, and appropriate uses. As innovation accelerates and the field evolves, start with these initial considerations.

Be transparent about the use of AI in your technology

AI algorithms and their underlying logic and data are often hidden from view. In light of this invisibility and ongoing national conversations about AI, transparency is essential — both in clinical settings and with patients and caregivers. Being clear about whether and how AI is used helps maintain patients' trust and encourages engagement.

Keeping in mind the various levels of health IT literacy among your clinicians, staff, patients, and caregivers, develop a communication plan including educational materials to openly and proactively communicate:

• When and how AI is being used
• What data the AI uses
• Technical aspects about the AI and how it performs
• Risks related to the AI and how those risks are managed or addressed

It's important to remember that to be transparent, your practice needs regular and consistent access to information on the AI's usage, data, performance, risks, and other technical aspects. Your practice might have this information, but your EHR vendor and your patients might also have necessary information.

Increase patient engagement by leveraging the use of AI

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's workshop brief Diagnosis in the Era of Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence highlights several opportunities to use AI to increase patient engagement, such as:

• Focusing on reaching patients and family caregivers with educational materials about what AI is, why and when it is used, and the reasons for transparency and clear notifications
• Incorporating patient and caregiver perspectives in the development and use of AI and digital health technologies to improve diagnosis
• Empowering patients to use AI and digital health tools to understand their symptoms and inform decisions throughout the diagnostic process
• Improving transparency and building trust with patients and caregivers to use AI and digital health technologies for their diagnosis

Increase health IT literacy in each step of the development process

As you research, develop, and implement AI tools within your practice setting, consider the following approaches to aid health IT literacy regarding AI:

• Investigate and ensure that the AI you're considering meets the FAVES rubric: Fair (unbiased, equitable), Appropriate, Valid, Effective, and Safe. Read more in the ONC Blog post on Increasing the Transparency and Trustworthiness of AI in Health Care.
• Review the requirements for algorithm transparency and information sharing applicable to certified health IT regulated by ONC in this Decision Support Interventions (DSI) Fact Sheet [PDF — 281 KB].
• Involve users in your practice in the design of AI tools and workflows.
• Develop and schedule regular clinician and staff trainings on how your practice uses AI, tailored to use cases and roles.
• Regularly measure and monitor the use and performance of AI.
• Report the AI system's performance and impact on health and safety, both internally and externally.

Document the measurement and monitoring process to support knowledge sharing and transparency. And update the process regularly — especially as the environments and data underlying AI algorithms change over time. Ongoing monitoring, measurement, and transparency promote a learning health system.

Resources

• The National Academy of Medicine's An Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct for Health and Medicine: Essential Guidance for Aligned Action (2025)
• The U.S. Government Accountability Office's Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: Benefits and Challenges of Technologies to Augment Patient Care [PDF — 4.9 MB] (2020)
• Article in the Journal of Participatory Medicine: From E-Patients to AI Patients: The Tidal Wave Empowering Patients, Redefining Clinical Relationships, and Transforming Care (2025)

Enrollment is the first step to engagement. In signing up for the portal, becoming familiar with it, and committing to using it, patients take an active step in managing their health and care. But patients can be slow or reluctant to enroll in their EHR patient portals — and many never enroll at all.

Patients report not enrolling because they:

• Don’t remember discussing it with their clinicians
• Lack information or motivation — for example, they don’t have signup instructions or they feel too busy
• Question the value of digital communication — for example, they think it won’t be useful or they prefer phone over email
• Need computer help — for example, they don’t have computer access or skills ¹⁴

This reluctance may seem overwhelming or out of your control, but there’s a lot that clinicians and practices can do to overcome these barriers and boost registration.

In this chapter, we’ll identify best practices for getting patients enrolled in — and on board with — patient portals. You can then tailor this approach to fit your practice. For instance, clinicians in small practices who have lifelong relationships with their patients can use the portal as a tool to deepen their communication. Large health systems might train patient greeters to become portal enrollment staff. One thing is certain: whether you’re a practice of 1 or 1,000, you can achieve high portal adoption.

The amount of time and effort it takes to register for a patient portal can affect whether your patients successfully enroll or give up halfway through.

Make the process easier on them and you by choosing a portal with a quick, secure signup process. Ideally, the patient has to enter only a few pieces of information — and the portal confirms the patient’s identity on the back end.

To facilitate enrollment, automatically enroll your patients in a portal account, instead of waiting for patients to sign up themselves. Keep enrollment numbers up by encouraging new patients to stay registered and offering tips for patients with limited computer access or skills.

You can also increase the number of patients who enroll and use the portal by integrating portal use into patients’ care plans. For example, encourage patients to use the portal to make follow-up appointments, stay on top of recommended screenings, or request refills. Some portals even enable clinicians to create task lists for patients that include activities related to taking medications, eating a healthy diet, and staying physically active. By taking this approach, you can set the expectation that using the patient portal is part of following their recommendations — just like getting regular physical activity or taking medicine as prescribed.

Treat patients’ office visits as a prime opportunity for portal registration.

Patients are more likely to register in the office, where they can get support from practice staff and engage in a personal conversation about benefits of the portal. If patients are asked to sign up once they’ve returned home, they may forget, have competing priorities, or struggle to navigate the technology on their own.

Make in-office registration the default by building it into your care delivery workflow and offering several registration touch points during a visit. For example, at check-in and check-out the receptionist, medical assistant, or nurse can teach patients about the portal and offer to sign them up on the spot using a kiosk, tablet, or registrar computer.

Use positive, encouraging language — with both staff and patients — and leverage every educational opportunity.

Get staff buy-in

Strong leadership and staff buy-in to the patient portal can set the stage for effective marketing and lead to higher enrollment.

Tips for Practice Administrators ¹⁷

Practice leaders can take several steps to create an environment that encourages portal adoption.

• Provide opportunities for practice staff to discuss portal adoption, so that you can address fears and identify solutions
• Encourage staff to set up their own patient portal accounts, so that they can better understand the tool and its potential value to patients
• Offer staff incentives for portal adoption — for example, via practice-wide contests
• Promote the portal internally as a critical offering to patients, so that all staff view portal use as an opportunity for high-quality customer service
• Explain that it’s important for all clinicians to adopt the portal so that the practice can market consistently to all patients and avoid sending mixed messages
• Foster enthusiasm for the portal among staff, so that they can relay that enthusiasm to patients

Tell patients how they can benefit.

Ensure that all members of the care team can relay the benefits of the portal and show patients how to do basic tasks like view lab results, send messages, pay bills, and request or schedule an appointment. See Chapter 3 of this playbook for more information on portal benefits.

Give clinicians and staff talking points so that everyone reinforces the same key messages.

Consider jumping on board with the Blue Button Initiative, a public-private partnership to provide consumers with easy access to their health records in a format they can use. ¹⁹ The Blue Button symbol indicates to patients that they can download a personal medical summary that includes medications, conditions, and more. You can customize the Blue Button symbol to your practice.

Take advantage of every touchpoint. ²⁴

Take every opportunity to promote patient portal enrollment. Over the course of a visit, a patient may talk to several practice staff including a receptionist, nurse, and doctor. Treat each conversation with a patient as an opportunity to explain the portal’s value and highlight the simple steps patients can take to activate their account.

You can also add portal enrollment steps to paperwork, such as after-visit summaries. Make the instructions actionable and easy for patients to understand — choose clear, direct language and use illustrations, bullets, and numbering where possible. Encourage them to take immediate action.

Adding clear action steps to your after-visit summaries — with images in an appealing layout — may inspire patients to enroll in online portals. It’s an affordable, scalable way to encourage patient participation.

Remember that marketing opportunities exist outside of a visit, too — like when patients call the office.

Tips for Practice Staff

Practice staff can take steps to make the most of each patient touch point.

• Teach patients about the portal while they’re waiting to see their doctors
• In the waiting room, have posters, brochures, and videos that highlight portal features. Ask your EHR vendor what materials they offer — many have developed portal marketing materials so that you don’t have to
• Give patients instructions for logging into the portal on a smartphone while they wait
• Set up a pre-recorded hold message or a message that plays at the end of a call that reminds patients to register
• Show patients the simple portal enrollment steps listed on their after-visit summary and encourage them to sign up

Make patient portal communication the norm.

Move away from traditional methods of patient communication, like phone and mail. Frame the patient portal as the best way to reach clinicians and see important medical information.

Patient portals have the potential to streamline clinician workflow and improve patient engagement.

But at first, clinicians may be overwhelmed by the number of features that portals offer or fear that using the portal will be cumbersome and ineffective.

You can take small steps to overcome these barriers and get the most out of your patient portal. Although patient portals vary from vendor to vendor, most include a basic set of features that offer value to patients. These features can improve the way clinicians and patients:

• Handle administrative tasks, like booking appointments
• Communicate with each other
• Manage care

Use these features to engage your patients in their care and make care coordination and communication more convenient, efficient, and effective — for them and for you.

Keep in mind that other features may also be available — but make sure you’ve determined their value before adding them. If you clog the portal with unnecessary information and tools, patients may get overwhelmed and find the portal more difficult to navigate and use.

Booking medical appointments and refilling prescriptions over the phone can be time-consuming for both patients and clinicians. On average, it takes a little more than 8 minutes to make an appointment over the phone. ²⁵

In 2017, over half of non-federal acute care hospitals reported that they allow patients to schedule appointments and refill prescriptions through their portal. ²⁶ Allowing patients to book medical appointments and refill prescriptions online will free up staff to support your practice in more valuable ways. ²⁷ And research shows that patients use these features — in 2017, 39% of people with access to a portal used it to make appointments and 37% requested medication refills. ²⁸

Between 2015 and 2017, the number of non-federal acute care hospitals that offered secure messaging through their patient portal increased by nearly 10%.³¹ By setting up secure messaging, your practice will take a big step toward achieving a Meaningful Use objective: “Use secure electronic messaging to communicate with patients on relevant health information.” ³²

There are many scenarios in which patients and clinicians need to communicate between visits. Patients may have follow-up questions about a clinician’s guidance or a medication. ³³ Clinicians may need to share test results or explain a recommendation in more detail.

Using the portal, patients and clinicians can:

• Share brief messages and updates
• Clarify issues and advice
• Correct misunderstandings before they become significant problems
• Record details, like a referral name or post-operative instructions
• Link to educational materials and other online resources ³⁴

Patient portals offer an opportunity to improve and streamline patient-clinician communication and practice workflow. The portal’s secure email can reduce the need for face-to-face visits and phone calls by giving patients and clinicians a quick, convenient way to exchange information.

With secure email through the portal, your practice can:

• Avoid telephone tag, which can lead to both miscommunication and communication delays
• Address routine health issues more efficiently, so you can dedicate more time to patients who need in-person care
• Have support staff to triage messages, so that clinicians only need to weigh in as necessary ³⁵
• Share lab results — a best practice identified by some EHRs, like athenahealth — or other post-visit follow-up with patients

To maximize efficiency, practices must integrate reading and responding to email into their workflow. For example, assign a staff member to acknowledge all patient messages within 1 business day. Clinicians can then respond to the patient’s question or issue at their convenience. ³⁶

Tips for Practice Administrators ³⁷

If your practice uses the portal’s email feature, consider establishing policies that address:

• Turnaround time for responding to patient emails. Don’t use email for urgent issues.
• The types of communication allowed over email. Decide which requests (like prescription refills and appointment scheduling) clinicians will fulfill and which sensitive topics (like HIV and mental health) they’ll discuss.

Tips for Clinicians

Follow these guidelines for communicating with patients by email. ³⁸

Address privacy issues

• Let patients know which other clinicians or practice staff may read and respond to their emails — for example, outside usual business hours or when you’re on vacation. Include this privacy disclaimer in each patient’s medical record.
• Keep a mailing list of patients, but only send group emails using the blind copy feature. Never send group emails where patients can see each other’s names.

Give patients clear guidance

Make sure to explain the policies and procedures for using portal email, like typical response time and types of communication allowed over email (see Tips for Practice Administrators above).

Also, ask patients to:

• Write a subject line that describes the nature of their email, like “Billing question” or “Medical advice”
• Call 911 or your office about urgent issues

For more information and guidance, check out ONC’s Fact Sheet: Using Secure Electronic Messaging to Support Patient and Family Engagement [PDF — 198 KB]. ³⁹

Patients immediately forget up to 80% of the clinical information they receive during a visit. ⁴³ Clinician notes can give patients a snapshot of a visit so they can better remember, understand, and act on their clinician’s advice after the visit has ended. Patients have always had a right to see these notes — but until recently there hasn’t been a simple, straightforward way to access them. ⁴⁴

By offering patients access to notes through a portal, you can promote transparency and change the way people engage with their health and care. ⁴⁵ Since patients are the best source of information about their health, they can also act as a second pair of eyes on the record. With patients checking for accuracy, clinicians can improve the quality of a medical record and make more informed clinical decisions. ⁴⁶

Tips for Clinicians

When sharing notes with patients, it’s important to:

• Explain to patients what they can expect to see in the notes
• Use plain language instead of medical jargon or abbreviations
• Soften language and add context, when necessary (for example, instead of labeling a patient as “obese,” include their BMI and link to patient education about BMI)
• Keep notes focused on specific issues
• Discuss lab or study results, if applicable
• Reference educational materials, whenever possible ⁴⁷

Research shows that adding educational resources to patient portals can make them more useful and effective ⁵¹ — and help you increase patient engagement. Portals and electronic health records can also help your staff provide tailored information and community resources to patients who may benefit from them.

When choosing educational resources to add your patient portal, it’s important to select trusted sources. For example, healthfinder.gov offers actionable, evidence-based, plain language health and wellness information, as well as free interactive tools like myhealthfinder, which provides personalized preventive health care services recommendations.

Because healthfinder.gov manages the content, you can add the tool to a portal or website without having to worry about keeping the information relevant and up-to-date.

You can also use your EHR to track social determinants of health: the social, economic, and environmental conditions that can affect health and health outcomes. Including this information in your EHR can help your staff identify and address factors that may contribute to health complications, such as unsafe housing or lack of access to safe opportunities for physical activity.

See the PRAPARE Implementation and Action Toolkit for resources on how to set up your EHR to gather data on social determinants of health, and how to assess and respond to that data once it’s collected.

More and more patient health information is available electronically — but patients and caregivers still face challenges in accessing, using, and sharing their data. Patient portals may not include all the information patients need — and what's there may be inaccurate or incomplete. And often, health data can’t be requested or shared electronically, or transferred to other health care clinicians without a cumbersome, multi-step request process.

To learn more about the challenges patients face in the records request process, check out ONC’s report Improving the Health Records Request Process for Patients: Insights from User Experience Research [PDF - 2.6 MB]. The report includes personas and journey maps illustrating these challenges, as well as tips on creating a better records request process.

We know that patients and caregivers who do have access to their data can better coordinate their health care, prevent repeat or unnecessary tests and procedures, and have greater control over their health and well-being.

That’s why ONC is committed to addressing large-scale access and portability issues — to help in creating a medical records request process that works for everyone.

There’s a lot that health care practices can do today to improve the records request process and reduce the burden on consumers, clinicians, and care teams. Integrating records requests into your patient portal is a win-win — it increases patient satisfaction, saves time, and reduces hassle for clinicians, administrators, and other practice staff.

Patient portals can be a powerful force in patient engagement — but it's important for them to be inclusive and accessible. In 2017, nearly 1 in 5 individuals who were offered access to their online medical record but didn't view it said they didn't have a way to access the website. ⁵² It's also important for health care providers to actively encourage patients to use their portals. In 2024, individuals who were encouraged to use their patient portals to access their online medical record did so at a much higher rate — over 50% higher — than individuals who were not encouraged. ⁵³

Depending on your patient population, trouble accessing or using the patient portal can contribute to health disparities — preventable differences in health outcomes between groups of people that are closely linked with social, economic, or environmental disadvantages. For example, if a portal's medication refill reminders are only available in English, patients with limited English proficiency may be less likely to get the medications they need to manage chronic conditions.

When setting up your portal, take steps to ensure that it meets the needs of all your patients.

To support all patients in accessing their health information, you can:

• Offer your patient portal in multiple languages
• Make sure your portal is mobile-friendly and that the pages load quickly, so that users with limited data or slow connections can still access it
• Check that your portal is easy to navigate for patients who use screen readers or other assistive technology

In 2024, most individuals (57%) used smartphone health apps to access their online medical records, while many (42%) only used web-based access through their patient portals. ⁵⁴

Keep in mind, simply offering patients access to a portal isn't enough — actively encouraging them to use it is key to ensuring they access their online medical records, review written instructions or clinical notes, and view test results. As the figure below shows, patients are much more likely to be engaged and use your online services when you encourage them to do so. ⁵⁵

Within the portal, you can also capture information that helps your staff provide culturally and linguistically appropriate care — such as data fields indicating patients' preferences.

Make sure caregivers have patient portal access

For patients who are unable to access or use their portal (due to factors like limited cognitive function, lack of education, or inexperience with technology), family members or friends are essential members of the care team. ⁵⁷

Take steps to allow portal access for caregivers while acknowledging both the diverse roles caregivers can play and patients' varied needs and desires. In 2024, over 50% of caregivers accessed the patient's online medical record when offered access, a figure that doubled between 2020 and 2024. ⁵⁸

For adolescent patients (ages 12 to 17), setting up varied levels of portal access can be particularly tricky. Adolescents may want to keep their health care decisions and medical information private, but laws vary from state to state.

Some state laws allow minors to receive specific kinds of health care, like mental or sexual health services, without their parents knowing or consenting. Others say that minors can make decisions on their own if they have an “adult status,” like being married or in the military. ⁵⁹

Parents may also want to keep certain information, like a family history of disease, between only themselves and their adolescent's provider.

As you're developing and improving your patient portal, it's important to be inclusive and accessible to non-English-speaking patients as much as possible. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 22% of individuals age 5 years and older speak a language other than English at home. ⁶²

To support non-English-speaking individuals in your patient population, you can: ⁶³

• Use the portal landing page to make materials available in languages spoken by your patients
• Enable your system to send text messages to patients in their preferred language, either as part of the portal or as a stand-alone functionality
• Let patients know they may send secure messages to their provider in their native language — if you have workflows developed to translate and respond to these messages

According to the AARP and National Alliance of Caregiving, approximately 63 million people across the United States, or one in four adults, are family caregivers for an adult or child. ⁶⁴ They provide care at home and drive children or parents to the doctor or emergency room. They also coordinate care and update health information across clinical settings and specialists, school clinics and independent living facilities, in person and remotely by telephone or email. Sometimes they help patients to overcome health literacy or health IT literacy difficulties.

Likewise, allowing family members and family caregivers, and sometimes friends and neighbors, to access one’s patient health information through a portal is becoming much more common. In 2019, non-federal acute care hospitals reported offering this access to 89-90% of patients’ designated caregivers across inpatient and outpatient settings. ⁶⁵ The number of caregivers who used the portal to access the patient’s health information doubled from 2020 to 2024, from 24% to 51%. ⁶⁶

Laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are designed to keep patients’ medical records and personal health information private and secure. At the same time, HIPAA allows family caregivers— also known as personal representatives—to have proxy access to and use of a patient’s health information, ⁶⁷ because in many situations, it is appropriate or necessary for a family member, friend, or other caregiver to have access to a patient’s health information so that they may coordinate, deliver, or oversee care. To facilitate and encourage caregiver access, clinicians and practice administrators will also want to follow federal and state laws related to proxy access.

Similarly, federal regulations require that ONC-certified electronic health records and certified health IT must allow patients—and patient-authorized representatives, such as family caregivers—to access, view, download, and transmit a patient’s health information. ⁶⁸

Under HIPAA, a patient’s personal representative (someone authorized under state or other applicable law to act on behalf of the patient) has a right to access the patient’s personal health information. The patient also has a right to allow their personal representative to share this information with someone else, like a doctor or hospital. ⁷⁰

Examples of family caregivers and others who may need to access patient information for specific reasons include:

• A parent of a minor child to coordinate visits to the child’s pediatrician or an emergency room, and provide relevant information about the child’s health and immunizations to schools and summer camps
• An adult child of a parent or parents who request or need help with their health care
• A home health aide to a chronically ill patient
• A health care power of attorney responsible for an incapacitated patient’s medical decisions and care ⁷¹
• Anyone the patient authorizes under a durable power of attorney for health care
• A family member or other personal representative who needs health information about a deceased family member

The opportunities created by caregiver access to patient portals include: ⁷²

• Enabling providers to differentiate with whom they are exchanging secure messages: the patient or someone else involved in their care
• The ability to respect patient preferences for including others in their care
• Improved transitional care by providing family caregivers with timely, accurate, and comprehensive information after patients have been discharged from the hospital, including the doctor’s or hospital’s discharge instructions
• Greater collaboration between clinicians and family caregivers
• More impactful involvement of caregivers in patients’ self-management plans
• Greater information transparency, which enables family caregivers to alert clinicians to missing or inaccurate information in patients’ health records

Fully integrating and implementing family caregivers’ shared access to patient portals is a major step in patient engagement. It has the potential to increase clinical quality and patient safety, expand shared care planning, improve health system interactions, spot errors and omissions in the patient’s health record, and strengthen partnerships between patients, caregivers, and clinicians.

Tips for Practice Administrators ⁷³

Practice administrators can take steps to enable caregivers’ access.

• See if your EHR vendor allows providers to set varying levels of access to a patient’s portal information to enable family caregivers to access, view, download, and transmit their health information
• Work with your EHR vendor to make sure you can give each personal representative a unique, secure login to access the patient’s portal
• Make sure that staff and clinicians understand registration processes and timelines for granting shared/proxy access — and identify practice workflows for implementation, including when registration happens, how it happens, who is involved, etc.
• Make sure that patients and family caregivers understand these registration processes and timelines, and how to use proxy access, perhaps as part of welcoming new patients and annual reminders for existing patients
• Consider strategies to promote awareness about the availability of shared/proxy access among your patients, staff, and clinicians, including why it’s important to access patient’s health information the right way, and how you’ll get the access you need

Tips for Clinicians

Clinicians play an important role in encouraging and even managing caregivers’ access.

• Talk regularly with your patients to find out who else is involved in their care and needs to stay informed about their treatment plan
• Ask your patients about their preferences for giving their family caregivers access to their health information (HIPAA generally allows a provider to share health information with family members or friends involved in the patient’s care unless the patient objects) ⁷⁴
• When a patient makes a request or circumstances warrant, customize caregivers’ access to the patient’s portal information, such as age-based restrictions for adolescent health information or restricted access for sensitive information like psychotherapy notes and pregnancy tests

Many patient portals still offer a one-size-fits-all approach to information access where family caregivers, friends, neighbors, and others with the right login see the full medical record in the patient portal. Some patients share their own login credentials with their family caregivers, but this gives family caregivers access to the patient’s portal information — including being able to view the patient’s private messages to or from clinicians. What does the patient prefer?

An environmental scan of 20 large and geographically diverse health systems found that the majority of them give caregivers full access to patient portal information and features, yet the researchers also reported that patients’ preferences for sharing their health information with others involved in their care vary widely. The study indicates that there’s still much to be done in both promoting awareness and differentiating levels of access that respect patients’ choices and control of their health information. ⁷⁵

As noted above, family caregivers’ relationship with the patient can vary, and their respective need for and use of the patient’s health information—and the patient’s preferences—might vary, too. Examples include the personal representative under HIPAA, someone named as a power of attorney for health care, the parent of a teenager with reproductive health data, and someone needing information to help finish the next steps after a loved one dies.

Establishing different levels of access can help you balance the competing needs of patient privacy and caregiver access. Giving caregivers their own unique login to the portal has other advantages beyond respecting patient privacy. It can also:

• Increase security by tracking the portal use of each individual, instead of a caregiver using a patient’s credentials ⁷⁶
• Increase the amount of meaningful data available to learning health systems by capturing both patient-reported and caregiver-reported data ⁷⁷

Tip for Practice Administrators

• Allow patients and their representatives to see different information and access different features, depending on a patient’s needs and characteristics as well as relevant laws.

Family caregivers can be involved across the arc of a person’s care and health history: the mother who recently delivered a newborn infant, the parent taking care of a minor child, the partner taking care of a spouse with cancer, the adult managing the care of a parent with Alzheimer’s disease, or the friend or neighbor helping with the care of someone with multiple chronic conditions. Accordingly, family caregivers might have a wide range of health information to share with clinicians and practices about the patient’s health, shared care planning, and health goals. Family caregivers can share this information by completing forms, sending updates and questions through secure messages, remote monitoring, reporting services by community or social service organizations to redress social drivers of health, even scheduling appointments.

Your patient portal can be an efficient and effective way to integrate much of that information across your patient population and their varied circumstances, especially if you design it and implement it with those capabilities in mind. This, in turn, can reduce the burdens on your practice to collect and record this information during office visits and telephone calls. Note that these features focus on and aid caregiving and care planning, but they are also examples of integrating patient-generated health data more broadly. Consult Chapter 6 of the Patient Engagement Playbook on patient-generated health data to learn more.

The common clinical data set in your EHR is called the U.S. Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI). Among many others, the USCDI includes data elements specifically about caregivers and care planning.

• A Care Team Members data class allows your practice to collect and integrate the name, role, location, and telephone number of care team members, including family caregivers.
• A Care Plan data class allows your practice to collect and integrate a shared care plan informed by members of a coordinated care team—including family caregivers. Care Plan data details conditions, needs, and strategies for addressing these conditions. These data also include problems, health concerns, assessments, goals, and interventions from across care settings.

End-of-life planning, or advance care planning (ACP), is another way that patients provide critical decisions about their health goals and care, including using family caregivers. Often called advance directives, they have been shown to increase patients’ satisfaction with their health care and improve quality of life for people with a terminal illness. ⁷⁸ But completing and documenting this process can be challenging for both patients and clinicians.

Patient portals can help with advance care planning discussions and boost patient satisfaction. ⁷⁹ If your portal includes an ACP feature, consider promoting it to your patients. In lieu of that, some systems include the ability for patients to securely upload documents. If that’s an option, invite patients to add a PDF copy of their plan to their electronic record. Patients could also add a PDF copy of a durable power of attorney for health care, which designates and authorizes someone else, such as a family caregiver, to make decisions for the patient when the patient cannot.

Here again, USCDI can help practices collect and integrate this information for clinical use.

• A data class on Goals and Preferences includes a data element to record the existence of an Advance Directive and its location, content, type, and verification status. It also includes data elements to record the patient’s treatment intervention preferences and care experience preferences.

Historically, clinicians have had limited access to patients’ health and well-being data. They’ve made do with information collected during patient visits, like self-reported lifestyle habits and family health histories.

Today, research shows that factors outside the clinical setting — socioeconomic, environmental, and health behaviors — all play a role in people's health and well-being. Patients and family caregivers are often the best sources for getting health and well-being data, including patient-generated health data. These data can be integrated into patients’ EHRs and support doctors’ decision-making for better care, prevention, better health outcomes, and lower costs.

A nationwide survey of adults by the National Partnership for Women & Families found that patients want more than just electronic access to view their health information. Patients also expect to be able to communicate with their providers and to share patient-generated health data about their health and conditions in real time. They expect to be partners in their care, with access and sharing in both directions.⁸⁰

Today, health IT is transforming our ability to collect and integrate accurate, reliable patient data from different sources into EHRs. Clinical practices can use portals and application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate patients’ health data from devices, remote monitoring, wearables, and more. Each year, the U.S. Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI)—the minimum, standardized set of structured data elements that certified EHR technology must integrate and exchange—adds more data elements capable of collecting patient-generated health data, such as Family Health History, Reported Medication, Pregnancy Status (i.e., the intent to become pregnant), Nutrition & Diet, SDOH Problems/Health Concerns, and Travel Information.⁸¹ In addition, the best practice is for clinicians to collect and record the patient’s self-reported values for certain health data, such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and pregnancy status.⁸²

Using technology, patients can also share information that’s critical for health care decision-making but often too time-consuming or cumbersome for clinicians to gather — like family medical histories. What’s more, patients can provide these data from home, so that clinicians can maximize precious office visit time. At home, patients and family caregivers can refer to actual records and data rather than fill out forms from imperfect memory in the doctor’s office.

Across the nation, patients’ phones, computers, and personal health devices are teeming with patient-generated health data: health-related data that patients create, record, or gather to help identify and address a health concern. They include:

• Health history
• Treatment history
• Patient-reported outcomes
• Medication adherence
• BBiometric data, such as blood pressure, temperature, weight, and blood glucose levels
• Symptoms, such as nausea, headaches, and diarrhea
• Advance directives and birth plans
• Lifestyle choices, such as diet and exercise^{85, 86}

As the amount of available data has grown, so too has our ability to collect, organize, and make sense of it all. More and more health systems are aggregating patient-generated health data in their EHRs and relying on these data to conduct remote monitoring — that is, to track patients’ health and wellness outside the clinic.

Clinicians can take advantage of these patient-generated health data to fill information gaps between appointments — and, ultimately, improve clinical decision-making, care delivery, and health outcomes.

The results are real for practices as well as patients:

• Fewer hospital readmissions, which can help avoid penalties for excessive readmission imposed by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services⁸⁷
• Efficient diagnosis of illnesses, which saves practice resources
• Enhanced patient-centered care, so that clinicians can identify treatments and health behaviors that patients will follow through with
• Effective management of complex chronic conditions, so that patients can control their own health with less clinician intervention

“Using these tools — a wireless scale and bracelet-style activity tracker — my doctors and I have been able to assess intervention effectiveness, adjust dosages, unearth side effects, and clarify decision points.

Without the objective measure provided by my activity tracker, we would be basing our decision on my subjective assessments of getting worse… By putting my data to work for me, we can now do better.”

— Donna Cryer, liver transplant survivor⁸⁸

Options for Integrating Patient-Generated Health Data

Across practices and electronic health records, it varies how EHRs integrate patient-generated health data and whether and when patients could write data directly to the EHR (e.g., research study data), or whether health system review and prior approval were required to authorize the data to be written into the EHR (e.g., patient-submitted corrections or amendments to the medical record).^{89 90 91}

Patient Reported Outcomes

Patient reported outcomes are outcomes reported directly by the patient, such as symptoms, changes in symptoms, and effects of treatments. Patients might report these outcomes in person during an office visit, or through a patient portal as patient-generated health data. Collecting and tracking patient reported outcomes in real time can increase patient engagement and patient-provider partnership, improve care, and decrease emergency department visits and hospitalizations.

For example, see Advancing the Collection and Use of Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) through Health Information Technology, or see below for another example of patient reported outcomes in cancer care.

“My goal over the past year has been to have the family history for most of my patients completed at least involving all first degree relatives. I did not find that this caused extra work or took much extra time – in fact it saved time and provided me valuable information for my practice.”

— Dr. Bruce Peyser, Medical Director, Pickett Road Clinic

Family health history can help predict a patient’s disease risk — essentially, it’s the simplest and least expensive form of genetic assessment.¹¹⁰ Traditionally, collecting and analyzing this information hasn’t been a routine part of primary care because of challenges like patients’ lack of knowledge (or memory lapse) about family history and clinicians’ limited time.

Now, technology-driven tools are changing the standard of risk assessments. For example, as mentioned above, the USCDI includes a Family Health History data element to help collect, use, and exchange standardized, structured data about patients’ family health histories. These tools enable patients to systematically collect family health histories and report back to their clinicians. Patients can complete these health histories at home with relevant records at hand rather than try to complete them by memory in the waiting room, which ensures accuracy and detail. Practice administrators can synthesize the data in the EHR, and doctors can review in advance. Clinicians can then ensure high-risk patients get necessary screenings and specialist care.¹¹¹

Tips for Practice Administrators

To collect family histories efficiently and effectively, consider taking these steps:

• Encourage patients to enter pertinent family history through the patient portal — so they don’t have to recall family details during the visit
• Ask medical assistants to review family history before a visit — so clinicians know the results before the patient visit and don’t waste valuable visit time collecting that information
• Conduct clinical training about how to recognize genetic diseases and manage high-risk patients¹¹²

mHealth — the use of mobile and wireless technologies to promote health — is an ever-changing field with great potential for patient engagement.

There are a growing number of patient-facing mobile applications and online tools designed to give patients access to their health information. These tools and apps can help people:

• Effectively manage chronic conditions
• Participate in research
• Share data with clinicians in real time
• Take a more active role in their health care

There are also numerous apps to help patients manage specific health conditions like diabetes or epilepsy.

One way for patients to access their EHR data is through an Application Programming Interface (API). The availability of APIs enables third-party app developers to connect patients' EHR data to new types of applications and online tools.

By enabling third-party API access to data from your EHR when patients request it, you can help empower your patients to use these innovative tools to support their health goals.

It’s no secret that mobile phones are everywhere these days, since 95% of Americans now own a cellphone of some kind — and 77% own a smartphone.¹¹⁷ The options for health apps are numerous, ranging from activity trackers to medication reminders and chronic condition self-management tools.

However, we still have a lot to learn about which “prescribable” apps are most effective.¹¹⁸ As more health professionals try out these new tools, the amount of information about the best ways to develop and use apps for patient engagement is sure to grow.

Evaluate and pilot test apps before recommending them

If you’re thinking of recommending an app for patient engagement — whether related to general wellness or for managing a specific health challenge — it’s important to do your homework. The following steps will help you evaluate whether an app is user friendly and appropriate for your patients.¹¹⁹

1. Review the literature: Search the scientific literature for app reviews and clinical trials
2. Search app clearinghouses: Websites that review apps can help you identify pros and cons of specific apps
3. Search app stores: Be sure to use specific key words, including terms related to the health condition or target behavior
4. Read user ratings and reviews: Look for positive comments about how the app works, how easy it is to use, and how effective it is
5. Read the privacy notice: Make sure that the app will protect your patients' health information by checking out the app's privacy notice
6. Ask your professional and patient networks: Use social media to find out what apps people like or are interested in
7. Pilot test the app: Try it out yourself — or enlist a helper — to assess the app’s functionality, accuracy, and usability
8. Get patient input: Once your patients have tried the app, don’t just talk about their health data — ask them how they like the app, too

There’s a lot to consider when researching and pilot testing an app! Of course, ease of use is key — but quality and safety are also essential.

• Usability is the “effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specific users can achieve a specific set of tasks in a particular environment.”
• Some factors that affect the quality and safety of a health app depend on the type of information or health condition the app addresses. Developing a Framework for Evaluating the Patient Engagement, Quality, and Safety of Mobile Health Applications lists some of the factors to consider.

A good relationship between patients and their health care team is a key part of successful care — and it’s influenced by many factors. As health IT continues to evolve, new opportunities and evidence are emerging about how EHRs and other health IT can strengthen patient-clinician interactions.

There are many benefits to allowing patients to access visit notes through their patient portal. One benefit is a better, more trusting relationship between patients and clinicians. Sharing notes has been shown to improve the patient-doctor relationship, especially for patients of color, patients with poorer self-reported health, and patients with less education.¹²⁰

An innovative way to engage patients with their EHR is to have a dual-screen setup where the patient can see what the clinician is typing during the appointment. A preliminary study found 100% patient satisfaction with this approach.¹²¹

Another option — especially for patients who may have barriers to accessing their portal from home — is to print notes out for them at the office.

As we’ve established, the potential upside of health IT is huge — that’s what this playbook is all about! But it’s also hard to overstate the value of good, old fashioned eye contact and other nonverbal cues for building trust and rapport with patients during their time in your office.

While evidence shows that EHRs can make patient visits more complicated, there are also opportunities to make visits more patient-centered.¹²² When you’re seeing patients, be sure to spend a portion of the appointment looking at them instead of your computer as you talk — and tell them what you’re doing as you use their EHR.

You can also take the opportunity to confirm that the information in your patient’s EHR is correct. Asking patients to validate their information with you in the room is another way to foster the patient-clinician relationship.

With telemedicine, technology lets clinicians provide some types of care to patients remotely.¹²³ Telemedicine — specifically, video appointments — offers several advantages. These include:

• Improved access to care for patients, especially those in rural areas¹²⁴
• Higher patient satisfaction¹²⁵
• Lower out-of-pocket costs for patients¹²⁶
• Improved management of chronic conditions¹²⁷
  

If your practice plans to offer telemedicine, learn more about it in the Health IT Playbook.

Take steps to optimize video appointments

For clinicians who provide live video appointments with patients, these basic pieces of set-up and etiquette can make the interaction smoother and more engaging for your patients:¹²⁸

• Make sure you have good lighting and aren’t lit from behind
• Know how to quickly mute yourself in case there’s background noise
• Be careful doing things like shuffling paper or typing when your microphone is on
• Have a simple background without doors, windows, or other distractions
• Angle the camera so you can make eye contact with your patients

Keep in mind that telemedicine may be a new experience for your patients, and walk them through the process so they know what to expect. For example, if you have to look away to write down notes, say what you’re doing.