Since the summer we have been piloting our patient portal, myDCR, involving more than 200 residents across Dorset, trialling different elements with specific patients. In our final case study of the year, Mark talks about how he has found myDCR and improvements he’d like to see.
Mark first heard about myDCR via an email invite to sign up from his Dorset County Hospital clinician Rebecca, who works at the Dorchester Diabetes Centre.
He was invited to trial the sharing of images and photographs, sent by the podiatry clinic, and found the initial sign-up process was simple to access from the link supplied in the invitation email.
Podiatry
He has used the account to show his wife the pictures that have been uploaded by the podiatry clinic and Mark likes the fact that he can see appointment information: “The biggest benefit is that I can see my future and previous appointments, but this is limited to appointments at the diabetes centre only.”
Mark likes the idea of a patient portal: “With many patients, diabetes brings plenty of side effects and, in turn plenty of appointment with other specialist departments. Having one portal that provides access to all the other clinical information would be of huge benefit to patients, their families, carers and medical staff.
“My biggest concern is that I might be taken ill, taken to hospital and my most recent medical information not being available. This portal could potentially help to provide details of my clinic visits in renal, eye, GP, orthotics, respiratory, prosthetics and any other department that diabetics generally end up visiting.
Due to the nature of Mark’s specific pilot, he wasn’t able to use the “My Support Network”, which would have allowed him to have included his care team details in his patient record, but this is something he is keen to see develop.
Patient resource
He accepts the nature of pilots mean that the patient portal is a work in progress and feels it would be good if other hospital and social care departments come on board to combine patient information from the various sources into myDCR: “If that does happen, I’m sure myDCR would be a much more useful patient resource.”
While he finds the links to additional health information useful, Mark feels he would probably use search engines to find most of this information because the search results have more detail about their content and are easier to refine.
Accepting that myDCR is at its pilot stage, he is keen to see the site be more patient friendly: “It appears that it’s a work-based site, rather than a portal designed for patients and their families. I’d suggest giving the portal a face-lift – some colour, pictures, something to make it more memorable and interesting to patients. In particular, younger diabetics and children have little to inspire them to return or become more involved in their care,” he added.
And will Mark still use it following the end of the pilot? A qualified yes, with a request for more details of his care made available: “I will still use it, but I don’t see my use increasing unless it becomes more integrated with the rest of my medical care.”
The DCR team has delivered nine separate pilots for the patient portal with over 130 patients having at least one letter published in their myDCR and in many cases five or more have been published per patient. This, and case studies such as Mark’s, has given us a huge amount of insight into how a patient portal can benefit, as well as highlighting how much work there is still to be done to ensure the portal can achieve maximum benefits to our patients.
- We are gathering feedback from the pilots and will be looking for ways to incorporate ideas raised by Mark and others in the future (DCR team).