Electronic Health Records

July 25 2008

Kaiser Permanente Featured in Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Podcast Series: 'The Power of Personal Health Records'

Kaiser Permanente's leadership in personal health records is featured prominently in a four-part podcast series just released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"The Power of Personal Health Records" explores how some organizations, such as Kaiser Permanente, are using technology to help consumers manage their health more efficiently.

Louise Liang, MD, senior vice president for quality and clinical systems support, is interviewed in the second part of the series. "The additional ways we have of taking care of our patients and meeting their needs has been just short of revolutionary," Dr. Liang said in the podcast. "These ways could be lab results. It could be secure messages. It could be looking up details about my last visit. It could be prescription refills. But if you look at secure messaging alone, we now have documented that 10 percent of all encounters or contacts with patients are now secure messaging."

Also interviewed are Ann Eastman, MD, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center, and one of Dr. Eastman's patients, who talks about how she was able to send and receive secure emails to Dr. Eastman to get the care she needed.

"The in-person clinical visit is so important and so rich, but we're all busy people," Dr. Eastman said in the podcast. "My patients are busy working people. My schedule is usually booked out pretty far. And the ability to communicate so easily and on a flexible schedule is huge."

More than 3.6 million secure emails were sent to Kaiser Permanente physicians and clinicians in 2007 alone, as reported in the organization's 2007 annual report (pdf). Kaiser Permanente announced in April that more than 2 million members were using My Health Manager, Kaiser Permanente's personal health record.

Listen to the entire podcast series through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Web site. The foundation is the largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care in the United States.