Patient education and engagement through the personal health record

This session will demonstrate the patient-centered benefits of My health manager, the online personal health record for members of Kaiser Permanente, housed on www.kp.org. This personalized health management tool allows members access to the same clinical record that their doctors' see and provides unique online tools to interact with their providers and the health plan. Members are encouraged to complete a Total Health Assessment (THA) to establish a health summary to see where they stand on key indicators, such as cholesterol, blood pressure and fitness. THA identifies areas for improvement and generates an e-mail invitation to participate in online change tools for weight management, smoking cessation, chronic disease management, nutrition and stress reduction. All the online tools are tailored to promote behavior changes to improve health. My health manager further engages the member to help manage their health with immunization and health screening alerts, access to online health libraries, and the ability to e-mail their doctor. As one indicator, more than 300,000 secure e-mail messages are sent each month to Kaiser Permanente doctors and clinicians, indicating growing consumer interest in e-visits. Additionally, outcomes showed that 55 percent lost weight, 54 percent stopped smoking, 89 percent improved their nutrition and 59 percent reported a decrease in personal symptoms of stress. Since first launching in August 2004, over 200,000 KP members have used these online tools with high satisfaction.