Portfolio item: Coursework paper (for INFO-B641, Business of Health Info, FA13)

HIT Use Case: Lab Test Results to Patients

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Summary

Patients First (PF) is a healthcare organization based in the state of Missouri, United States. As their name suggests, their mission is to be a consumer-centered provider of healthcare within their region of service. PF has rapidly adopted the Electronic Health Record (EHR), and has specified that one Meaningful Use (MU) criteria they wish to fulfill is electronic patient notification of laboratory results. Therefore, we build a use case that is centered upon this goal. Obtaining this use case would be easy for an organization such as PF, as proper IT adoption protocols and consumer-centered attitudes were prime consideration in their EHR implementation. The use case is then extended into a value case by potential downstream benefits, and a case explored in more detail is that of increased patient knowledge with respect to patient conditions; the value case argued is therefore is a measurable improvement in patient outcomes; indeed, we find in the literature that increased patient knowledge of a patient's own health condition has been demonstrated to lead to better patient outcomes. Lastly, these outcomes may be measured by disorder-specific scales, empirical laboratory value changes, and patient surveying. Should these values not be available (as is the current case), Monte Carlo simulation is used in order to provide simulated values of measurable patient outcome improvement.

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