Page 54 - Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

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

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HealtheVet is high. When asked if they were satisfied with the My
HealtheVet program overall, visitors rated My HealtheVet highly, with an
average satisfaction rating of 8.3 out of a possible 10. When asked how
likely they were to recommend My HealtheVet to someone else, most visi-
tors indicated they would recommend the site with an average likelihood
score of 8.6 out of 10. Veterans also indicated that they were highly likely
to return to the site and use it, with an average score of 9.1 out of 10.
In addition to providing services through My HealtheVet and assess-
ing consumer satisfaction, the VA is conducting performance evaluations
of the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance
(RE-AIM) of the system. The VA believes that it is important not only to
track the effectiveness of an intervention, but also to evaluate the adop-
tion of these tools used by both the patients and the clinicians. The ulti-
mate goal of these evaluations is to learn how to provide access to every
veteran in the country in such a way that the system can be maintained
over time.
There are many benefits of the My HealtheVet. In terms of health
literacy, access to information is a major issue. There is a vast amount of
information available to users of the Internet but it is not all necessarily
useful or helpful. Access to relevant, trusted, patient health–education
tools and resources such as are available at My HealtheVet increases
a patient’s level of engagement and fosters informed decision making.
Ensuring that these sources are highly functional and easy to use, with
information presented in a patient-friendly manner is one way that health
literacy can be improved. Content development includes input both from
experts who pay attention to the language that is used with the goal of
making it as understandable as possible, and from the results of focus
groups that test the content to make sure patients can understand.
Another benefit to patients is that access to care in multiple settings is
facilitated by the VA’s electronic health record and My HealtheVet. Such
access improves veterans’ timely access to services, enhancing utiliza-
tion management. A veteran could travel to a distant part of the country,
for example, and still be able to have a clinician call up a record that
stores information from all different sites where the patient has received
care. Furthermore, My HealtheVet increases the patients’ ability to derive
meaning from health information and make informed decisions by com-
bining usable, patient-friendly information in engaging formats with a
variety of other tools such as wellness reminders.
My HealtheVet also allows veterans to input information from care
provided in community settings. About 40 percent of the VA population
receives care outside the VA system so universal secure access to patient
health information is critical to providing integrated care coordination
among multiple providers.

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