Is there any eagerness to embrace patient portals? A study of conceptualization, implementation, adoption, and impact

• Author / Creator

  Avdagovska, Melita

• Patient portals are health information technologies that allow patients to view their personal medical record, schedule appointments, and communicate with their healthcare providers. Although portals are seen as necessary tool in the delivery of patient-centered care, the implementation and subsequent adoption of these systems has demonstrated to be a challenging process. Between 2016 and 2019, Alberta Health Services (AHS) introduced a patient portal called MyChart®. The implementation of the AHS MyChart® had not been previously documented or evaluated, and so it was unclear whether the patient portal was delivering the intended outcomes. The aim of this dissertation was to generate evidence to fill this gap, so that any shortcomings could be addressed prior to province-wide implementation in Alberta. This dissertation included three studies: a study based on historical methods, which documented the development of MyChart®; a comparative case study in which several clinics were compared, and a scoping review which examined how patient portal impact is being measured. The research questions and the methods selected were linked by the overall aim of this dissertation. The analysis exposed the complexities of implementing a patient portal in a public healthcare system and the influence the various social and political factors on the development and implementation stages. Additionally, it exposed the numerous factors that have an impact on the adoption stage. Furthermore, it demonstrated that patient portals need to be considered as part of a health system transformation rather than as just a technology. The findings of this dissertation showed the need for organizational change and careful management of the individual expectations when implementing technologies that are used by different groups within a healthcare system.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • information technology
  • patient portal

• Graduation date

  Fall 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-hxb0-dk34

• License

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