Robert Pearl

Patient engagement is easy, right? Just create a portal and tell patients it’s there. Of course, no one who puts a little thought into this idea believes it can be so simple. Healthcare isn’t “Field of Dreams,” after all. We can build it. They still might not come. But we still need to try and understand why, as this 2014 Health Affairs study found, the increased use of EHR technology has not created a parallel increase in electronic communication among patients and clinicians. In short, if patient portal use is an accurate indicator, how do we get patients engaged and hold their attention? One key issue might be that we’re not in agreement on what patient engagement is and what it is not.