VCU Gets $1.2 Million Grant to Study Whether Linking Patient Health Information to Physician Electronic Records will Improve Outcomes

By Anne Buckley

A Virginia Commonwealth University researcher has received a $1.2 million federal grant to study whether an interactive system linking patients to their health information in the electronic record of their primary care physician will increase the delivery of screening tests, immunizations and behavioral counseling.

Alex Krist, M.D., an assistant professor in the VCU School of Medicine's Department of Family Medicine, received the three-year grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

He will study whether an interactive preventive health record, or IPHR, called "My Preventive Care," will result in more patients receiving preventive health care interventions and referrals. The development of the IPHR will be designed to place patients at the center of their preventive care.

"For example, a patient in the study arriving at their doctor's office for a wellness examination, would have had an opportunity, prior to seeing the physician, to review a list of preventive services they have received in the past, the results of prior tests, individually tailored information about whether they have received the services recommended in national guidelines, and an opportunity to explore educational resources and decision aids about needed preventive care," said Krist.

The functions of the IPHR will extend beyond those of standard personal health records by providing tailored recommendations, links to educational resources and decision aids, as well as patient and clinician reminders, resulting in motivated patients engaged in their preventive care," Krist said.

Krist said that evidence supports the health benefits of preventive care, but Americans receive only 50 percent of recommended preventive services because of a host of patient, clinician and health care system barriers. "The IPHR has tremendous potential to prevent chronic conditions, improve quality of life, and prevent premature mortality by facilitating the delivery of nationally recommended preventive interventions," he said.

The study will take place in seven practices in the Virginia Ambulatory Care Outcomes Research Network, ACORN, that use a common electronic medical record. ACORN is VCU's practice-based research network that engages primary care medical practices throughout Virginia in research that can have a relatively immediate impact on how health care is delivered.