Poster Board Number: 7
Title: Rethinking Patient Education: A Large Health System Selects a Patient-education Product to Interface with the Electronic Medical Record
Objective: The Patient Education Strategic Planning Committee at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) was asked to recommend a patient-education product to interface with the electronic medical record in a new Epic system. To discover clinicians’ needs and preferences, the committee sent out a survey asking all ambulatory-care providers to rate different features, topic categories, and characteristics of patient-education handouts.
Methods: The committee created a list of features such as: reading level below sixth grade, short one-to-two-pages-long handouts, comprehensive versions, additional languages besides English and Spanish, ability to brand materials, and ability to ask vendor to revise content. The survey also listed topic categories such as diseases and conditions, pre and post procedures instructions, medical tests, rehabilitation exercises sheets with illustrations, and prevention and wellness topics. Clinicians were asked to rate these features and topic categories by importance and indicate if the feature or topic category are essential to include, nice to have, or not important. Two open-ended questions asked respondents to suggest features not listed in the survey and provide additional comments. This poster will present the survey results and how the committee used them to evaluate the products and make a recommendation for a patient-education product.
Results: UMHS clinicians indicated that they must have access to two types of topic categories: rehabilitation exercise sheets with illustrations and pediatric handouts written by B. D. Schmitt. Clinicians also indicated that the ability to interact with the vendor to correct accuracies is essential. The ability to brand materials or use a product that is already familiar to clinicians in our health system were considered nice to have but not essential to most respondents. Using the same product on the public website, patient portal, in-patient, and across the continuum of care was essential to 67% or respondents. Only 13% of respondents thought color illustrations were essential, but 47% indicated black-and-white illustrations were. In narrative comments, the most frequent theme was the ability to integrate materials that were written internally. The survey results helped decision makers to prioritize features of the different products and were a key-factor in the decision-making process.
Authors: Ruti Volk, AHIP, Librarian; Jean DuRussel-Weston, Interim Director; Lisa Schneider, Project Facilitator; Patient Education; University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor, MI
