Walden University
Transforming Nursing and Healthcare Through Technology
Literature Review: The Use of Clinical Systems to Improve Outcomes and Efficiencies
14:00:36 GMT -05:00
, Clinical systems strategies are mainly based on technologies to improve their impact on
patient care and efficiencies. Some of these technologies include patient portals, personal health
records, and automatic medication dispensing machines. These technologies can negatively or
positively impact patient care and efficiency, depending on how an organization implements
them. Literature evidence exists that cements the impact of these technologies on managing
different populations of patients and communities. Carrying out an annotated bibliography on
four research articles identifies the impact of patient portals on care improvement, efficiency and
outcomes.
Article 1
Griffin, A., Skinner, A., Thornhill, J., & Weinberger, M. (2016). Patient portals: Who uses
them?
What features do they use? And do they reduce hospital readmissions? Applied Clinical
Informatics, 7(2), 489–501. https://doi.org/10.4338/ACI-2016-01-RA-0003
Patient portals have an immense impact on patient engagement, satisfaction and
communication. According to Griffin et al. (2016), contemporary literature has turned its focus
on identifying the impact of patient portal use and clinical outcomes. The study's researchers
aimed to characterise patients that use the portal, the frequency in which the patients used the
standard features in the portal, and if all levels of portal use are related to patient readmission in
30 days. The investigators utilized the UNC Health Care System's patient portal (My UNC
chart). The researches focused mainly on patients with congestive heart failure, pneumonia and
myocardial infection. They identified that active users were only 8%, with 83% being non-users.
Active users had higher chances of being readmitted than non-users. Additionally, the most
commonly used feature in the portal was messaging, medical advice, laboratory tests and
medication lists. The researchers concluded that most of the patients did not use the patient
14:00:36 GMT -05:00