Using FollowMyHealth
Patient Portal to Meet
Meaningful Use
Requirements
Cheryl Jones
Director of Health Information, EHR &
Quality Resources
March, 2015
Welcome to Minnesota…
• Land of 10,000 Lakes – actual number of lakes:
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Over 10 acres in size: 11,842
Over 2.5 acres in size: 21,871
• There are 201 Mud Lakes, 154 Long Lakes and 123 Rice Lakes
• Minnesota has 90,000 miles of shoreline – more than California, Florida and Hawaii
combined!
• Minnesota has one recreational boat per every six people – more than any other state
• Official State Bird is the loon; actual State Bird is the mosquito
• The first open heart surgery and the first bone marrow transplant in the
United States were done at the University of Minnesota
• Bloomington/Minneapolis are the two farthest north latitude cities to ever
host a World Series game
• Minnesota’s professional sports teams: Twins, Wild, Vikings
• Minnesota inventions: the stapler, masking and Scotch tape, Post-It notes,
Wheaties cereal, Bisquick, HMOs, the Bundt pan, Tonka trucks, Aveda beauty
products, Green Giant vegetables, Spam (the meat in a can, not the e-mail)
Mankato Clinic
• Physician owned, multi-specialty group practice celebrating 100 years in 2016!
• 135 providers, over 725 staff / 10 sites in five
communities
• Ranks among the top 15 employers in the region
• EHR staff of 3.75 FTEs, IT staff of 9 FTEs
Our awesome team here at CRUG!
Our Systems
• Allscripts Touchworks v11.4.1 HF 5
• Implemented in September, 2008
• Other Allscripts products: Prenatal, SmartOffice Oncology,
Medflow Ophthalmology, Analytics
• McKesson Practice Plus Practice Management
system
• 43+ years
• In process of looking for a new vendor 
• FollowMyHealth Patient Portal
• Implemented in 2011
• Current enrollment over 15,000 patients
• Average 400+ new enrollees/month
Meaningful Use Attestation Status
• 2014 - attested using “flexibility rule”
• Medicare:
• Medicaid:
• Not eligible:
72
16
35
• Because we are a multispecialty group practice, we track MU
progress on ALL providers – whether they are “eligible
providers” or not
• All providers are required to meet MU standards
FMHMeaningful Use
• FMH can help meet these Meaningful Use (MU)
measures for Stage 2:
• Provide Patient Education (patient-specific education
resources)
• Patient Electronic Access (view, download, and
transmit)
• Online access to health information - within 4 business days
• Secure Electronic Messaging
Provide Patient Education
• Info Button
• KnowMyHealth
Patient Electronic Access
• 50% of patients seen during the reporting period must have online access to
their health information.
The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) defines this as the patient
having everything they need in order to access their information - not that
they actually have to access it. For this reason, sending an invitation to
FollowMyHealth counts toward this measure!
-- AND -5% of patients seen during the reporting period must actually view, download
or transmit their health information.
* To clarify, in order to certify for Meaningful Use, the patient portal must be
able to View, Download, AND Transmit. However, in order to qualify for tripping
the numerator of the measure, the patient must either View, Download, OR
Transmit
Secure Electronic Messaging
• 5% of patients seen during the reporting period
must send you a secure message.
For FollowMyHealth, all message types will count
as a secure message except Appointment
messages (Request Appointment, Reschedule
Appointment and Cancel Appointment
• Hallelujah for the “halo” effect!
Our Progress to date…
• Provide Patient Education (10%): MET
• Patient Electronic Access (50%): MET
• View, Download, Transmit (5%): MET
• Secure Electronic Messaging (5%): NOT MET
Portal Pitfalls
• Amendment requests increase
• Patients are reviewing their data and taking ownership
of their information
Message to staff and providers:
Congratulations! You have an engaged
patient and the opportunity to:
• Fix information if it isn’t correct
• Educate patient if it is!
Portal Pitfalls
• Messaging still causes anxiety for providers and staff
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Who will respond to patients?
How do I respond to patients?
How quickly do I need to reply to patient?
Clunky to initiate a message to the patient – if non-provider
is owner of task, won’t transmit to the portal and stays in
task list
OUR WISHES:
• Shouldn’t be able to hide 911 disclaimer
• Should be able to add customized facility message about
hours of operation, when to expect reply
• Workaround – use “out of office” function to auto-reply
messages to patients
Portal Pitfalls
• Meaningful Use implications on Results for
“Timely Access”
• Need to be available within 4 business days
• FMH only sends verified results – but our providers
don’t all verify within 4 days!!!
Good to know…
• Use portal “blasts” to send information to all patients enrolled in portal
• Community health events
• Timely reminders (flu shot season, etc., Urgent Care hours)
• New providers / exiting providers
• Demographic updates (insurance, address, etc.)
OUR WISH: would be nice to be able to set age and sex criteria
• Don’t forget to customize your outgoing e-mail & text messages
• Use QR codes wherever possible
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Population Health (Patient Query) alerts and reminders display in portal
Invalidated notes or letters are already in the portal
You can disable messaging for specific patients
Keep getting your patients enrolled!
Questions?
Thank you!!!
Cheryl Jones
[email protected]