Page 53 - Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

HeALtH LiteRACY, eHeALtH, AnD CoMMUniCAtion

In the Get Care tab, patients can keep track of their providers, their
treatment locations and facilities, and health insurance coverage. The
Track Health tab allows patients to keep track of their health history,
vital signs and readings, test and laboratory results, family health his-
tory, military health history, allergies, and immunizations. Patients can
also view graphs of self-entered data. Using the printer function they can
print these graphs and bring them to a clinic visit. In the pilot program
patients are allowed to authorize other persons to have electronic access
to their files for a specific amount of time, and this is planned for the
national program, as well.
There are nearly 24 million veterans and 259,000 VA staff who are eli-
gible to use the My HealtheVet system. Of the veterans, almost 8 million
are enrolled for care in the VA. At this time, there are currently more than
550,000 registered users of My HealtheVet, 71 percent of whom are actu-
ally VA patients. As mentioned previously, there is a three-tiered access
to the system—visitor, registered members, and authenticated members.
There are currently 59,000 veterans who have been in person authenti-
cated and are now able to receive VA prescription medication names as
the initial extract from the electronic health record, thereby improving
medication reconciliation. More than 5.3 million prescription refills have
been processed since August 31, 2005, and more than 16 million visits
have been made to the My HealtheVet website since it was launched in
November of 2003.
The median age of users of the My HealtheVet is 59, and the age seg-
ment with the largest number of users is from 60 to 64 years old. During
the past two quarters, however, the greatest population growth occurred
in the younger ages—soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. That
population is computer literate and has high expectations for being able
to interact via computer with the VA.
VA has implemented the American Customer Satisfaction Index
(ACSI) among users of My HealtheVet. Information obtained for that
index includes the veteran’s period of service, age, and frequency of visits.
The majority of users are from the Vietnam War era. Thirty-five percent
of users are from 51 to 60 years of age, and 33 percent are from 61 to 70
years. Fifty-one percent of users visit the website approximately once a
month, while 25 percent actually visit once a week.
Based on information from the ASCI, the satisfaction with My

learn how to do more for themselves, ask for the care they need, and say “no” to the care
they don’t need. Healthwise partners with health plans, hospitals, disease management
companies, and health Web sites to provide up-to-date, evidence-based information to the
®
people they serve. To learn more about the Healthwise Information Therapy (Ix ) Solution,
visit www.healthwise.org or call 1.800.706.9646” (Healthwise, 2008).

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