HITInsight Blog

Getting legislation through Congress—often a monumental battle, as demonstrated by recent efforts to pass the American Health Care Act—is one thing. But implementing new laws may be a greater challenge simply because they require so much sustained energy and attention.

Take mental health parity laws, for example.

Are you old enough to remember the pre-concert security searches for recording devices that were once part of every live music experience? Yes, musicians once had some semblance of control over bootleg audio and video.

But the proliferation of tiny hand-held computers that happen to also make phone calls ended all that. Now, tossing music-lovers who pull out a phone to record would empty entire arenas save a few luddites with flip phones and mullets.

Let’s face it, there will always be a segment of your patient population that just isn't interested in using a patient portal. But with so much of life now conducted online, the good news is that robust design and usefulness will engage most patients.

Over time, a portal should become the foundation for more extensive electronic communications between patient and provider—a tiny seedling that will hopefully blossom into a collaborative relationship. So, what functionalities should patient portal tools have to succeed?

There wasn’t just one cause of the 2008 Great Recession, but certainly a major factor was the creative lending instruments banks used to qualify prospective home buyers. As is now well known, massive mortgage defaults among those homeowners undermined the integrity of mortgage-backed securities and came within a hair’s breadth of tanking both the American and global economies.