Electronic Health Records

Dec 17 2007

Managing Health Online Discussed on NPR's 'Talk of the Nation'

A Permanente Federation physician was one of the featured guests Dec. 13 on a National Public Radio Talk of the Nation" show discussing how people are increasingly seeking health information online.

Ted Eytan, MD, shared how organizations such as Kaiser Permanente provide vetted, trusted information online, along with tools that enable people to find accurate information and even contact their providers online.

"Information is therapeutic, the more information people have that's accurate, the better," said Dr. Eytan, a Permanente physician from Group Health Cooperative in Seattle. "It is causing us to react, to innovate, to provide care the way people want it."

Guests on "Talk of the Nation" were reacting to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Live project showing how Americans are increasingly using the World Wide Web to find health information and use it for everything from managing pain to questioning a doctor about a course of treatment. One finding showed that an estimated 8 million Americans search online for health information every day.

Through My health manager on kp.org, Kaiser Permanente members have access to portions of their own KP HealthConnect™ record, the same medical record their doctors use. Dr. Eytan noted that one key feature of My health manager is the ability to send secure email messages to one's physician. With tools like secure e-mail, "We are realizing that health care is not about the visit. The purpose of health care is allow our patients to achieve their life goals, it's not to get health care," he said. "So, the visit for us becomes a starting point."

Dr. Eytan is on sabbatical from Group Health Cooperative to work with the Patient Centered Health Information Technology initiative, which seeks to improve adoption of health information technology tools to better engage patients and families in their own care. Kaiser Permanente and Group Health Collaborative formed an alliance in 1997 through which each organization offers reciprocal services for their members for both routine and urgent care.

For more, listen to this "Talk of the Nation" rebroadcast on NPR.org.