Abstract
BackgroundTo gain insight into the opinions and working methods of diabetes care providers after using a diabetes web portal for 4 years in order to understand the role of the provider in patients’ web portal use.MethodsSurvey among physicians and nurses from general practices and an outpatient clinic, correlated with data from the common web portal.ResultsOne hundred twenty-eight questionnaires were analysed (response rate 56.6%). Responders’ mean age was 46.2 ± 9.8 years and 43.8% were physicians. The majority was of opinion that the portal improves patients’ diabetes knowledge (90.6%) and quality of care (72.7%). Although uploading glucose diary (93.6%) and patient access to laboratory and clinical notes (91.2 and 71.0%) were considered important, these features were recommended to patients in only 71.8 and 19.5% respectively. 64.8% declared they informed their patients about the portal and 45.3% handed-out the information leaflet and website address. The portal was especially recommended to type 1 diabetes patients (78.3%); those on insulin (84.3%) and patients aged< 65 years (72.4%). Few found it timesaving (21.9%). Diabetes care providers’ opinions were not associated with patients’ portal use.ConclusionsProviders are positive about patients web portals but still not recommend or encourage the use to all patients. There seems room for improvement in their working methods.
Highlights
To gain insight into the opinions and working methods of diabetes care providers after using a diabetes web portal for 4 years in order to understand the role of the provider in patients’ web portal use
Patient web portals are of interest in this respect and many studies focused on the use of portals by patients with diabetes [2, 3]
On average 157.8 ± 9.1 diabetes patients were treated in a primary care practice; the outpatient clinic treated 2647 diabetes patients
Summary
To gain insight into the opinions and working methods of diabetes care providers after using a diabetes web portal for 4 years in order to understand the role of the provider in patients’ web portal use. Portals have shown a range of benefits, such as improved diabetes outcomes, increased patient satisfaction and patient-provider communication, We demonstrated that patients’ unawareness of the existence of a portal is an important barrier for starting its use [14]. Healthcare providers are often unaware of the existence of a patient portal or of its features [15, 16]. They may underestimate the number of patients that are interested in using it [15], are hesitant to start a web-based communication [17], or expect problems with the communication or in the relationship with their patients [18,19,20]. There is fear for patients experiencing problems with the interpretation of a portal’s data [18, Ronda et al BMC Family Practice (2018) 19:94
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