Leaders with Vanderbilt Health want to increase enrollment in My Health at Vanderbilt (MHAV), the online portal that offers VUMC’s patients such advantages as interacting with their electronic medical records, communicating securely with members of their healthcare team and paying medical bills electronically.
They foresee clinicians and their teams inviting their patients to enroll in MHAV as a matter of course. The enrollment push will begin with adult patients.
“Our patient portal is destined to play an increasingly central role as Vanderbilt finds new ways to engage patients as we advance continuity of care and population health. The recent major upgrade of My Health at Vanderbilt makes it easier for our patients to enroll and provides new features that patients and care teams will find highly valuable. To capitalize on these improvements, we’re asking clinicians and their teams to make enrollment a priority,” said Paul Sternberg Jr., MD, Chief Patient Experience and Service Officer.
The MHAV upgrade occurred Nov. 2, with the launch of eStar. On the day before, the ratio of adults enrolled in MHAV to total (unique) adult patients seen at Vanderbilt in the previous 12 months was 41.7 percent. Current plans call for increasing this figure to 50 percent by June 30, 2018.
“There are a lot of strategic advantages to having a robust infrastructure for patient engagement. At Vanderbilt we understand that these patient-engaging technologies improve the quality of care, improve the efficiency of healthcare delivery, provide a substantial competitive advantage, improve bill-pay and allow other technologies to plug in, such as tele-health solutions,” said Trent Rosenbloom, MD, MPH, associate professor of Biomedical Informatics, Medicine and Pediatrics and director of MHAV.
With the Nov. 2 upgrade, showing an ID in person at a Vanderbilt Health location is no longer required for enrollment: patients can now confirm their identity and complete MHAV enrollment online from home. Patients can fully enroll even before they are seen here.
Patients also can now update their lists of medications, diagnoses, allergies and other MHAV information (subject to review by a clinician before appearing in the patient’s electronic medical records). The new MHAV interface is sleek and easy to use, and the new mobile version includes all the features found in the desktop application.
The upgrade also laid groundwork for additional key features that will be rolled out clinic by clinic: starting 24 hours before a clinic appointment, patients will be able to check in online and complete patient intake forms; also, patients will be able to schedule, reschedule and cancel clinic appointments and add themselves to clinic waiting lists (a handful of clinics already provide online scheduling through MHAV).
“The main message to our patients about My Health at Vanderbilt is that it’s now much easier to sign up. We’re looking to our providers in particular to help deliver this message, because we know that patients are much more likely to enroll when urged by a clinician,” said Brian Carlson, director of Patient Experience.
Last year there were 3.7 million MHAV logons from more than 167,000 users. In the four weeks following the Nov. 2 upgrade, some 67,000 users renewed their MHAV password (as required by the upgrade), and another 10,000 people either enrolled for the first time or upgraded their account from limited status to full status.
For more information, visit the new My Health at Vanderbilt.
The MHAV team invites VUMC employees to download the new MHAV mobile app and to post ratings and user reviews on the App Store and Google Play.
