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San Francisco Health Network launches MySFHealth portal; early uptake limited by interoperability and digital-divide barriers
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Summary
MySFHealth, the new SFHN patient portal, went live two months ago. Staff reported strong interest but lower conversion to completed accounts because of required dual enrollments, interoperability limits, language barriers and patients without email or phone numbers; a Spanish portal is planned for summer.
Shoba Savesavaya, physician champion for the MySFHealth patient portal, updated the Health Commission on April 22 about the portal's early implementation.
"The patient portal is called My SF Health," Savesavaya said. It allows patients or designated proxies to view selected elements of inpatient and ambulatory records and access a patient-education database (Healthwise). The portal is intended to meet meaningful-use goals tied to electronic health-record adoption but currently does not support higher-level functions (secure messaging or appointment requests) because of interoperability limitations.
Implementation challenges identified by staff included the need for patients to enroll separately for hospital and clinic records due to disparate systems; language and computer-literacy barriers; common email providers requiring phone verification (creating a barrier for patients who use public terminals); and the lack of email addresses for many patients. Savesavaya said behavioral health services are not yet included and that a Spanish-language portal is planned for the summer.
On early metrics, Savesavaya said the hospital'based recruitment effort (volunteer staff dedicated to enrollment) produced higher completion rates than clinic-based recruitment that relies on existing staff with competing duties. The department is piloting call-center support, technical fixes with the vendor eClinicalWorks and partnerships with the public library and community organizations to address the digital divide.
Commissioners recommended specifying portal-use metrics for the Way Forward scorecard (hits, created accounts, language access) and suggested partnerships with local adult-education and community centers to help patients enroll and use the portal.
Why it matters: a functioning, accessible portal could improve patient engagement, support meaningful-use objectives and reduce administrative burden, but the current technical and social barriers mean adoption will require targeted outreach, language support and integration work with the network's broader EHR plans.
Next steps: technical fixes with the vendor, a Spanish-language interface this summer, call-center support for patients and community partnerships to help overcome the digital divide; commissioners asked staff to include portal adoption metrics in future reporting.
