How To Give Patients the Portal They Want

In 2002, years before patient portals were a checkbox to qualify for meaningful use incentives under healthcare reform, MD Anderson Cancer Center created its own patient portal.

myMDAnderson was launched in 2002. It gave patients a personalized electronic hub to organize all their information, and 24/7 online access. The tool has stood the test of time, undergoing major upgrades only a few times since it was launched. Today, more than 95 percent of MD Anderson patients are active portal users.

Initially, myMDAnderson was a standalone portal, because there was no electronic health record (EHR) until two years later. In 2010, the EHR was connected to myMDAnderson. The latest upgrade was last year, when the system went live on Epic. MD Anderson’s launch of Epic was far from a typical implementation. Patients liked the myMDAnderson experience so much that they did not want to replace it with Epic’s patient portal, MyChart. The Epic implementation team had its own agenda at first, which did not include introducing changes that would disrupt the schedule.

In our new article, we look at MD Anderson’s trailblazing approach to patient-centric technology development, and we’ll share how Epic lost an implementation battle but won the development war.

Read it now:

Listening to the Voice of the Customer Dramatically Increases Portal Usage at MD Anderson

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President