Clinical Practice Informs Secure Messaging Benefits and Best Practices

Background Clinical care team members in Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) facilities nationwide are working to integrate the use of Secure Messaging (SM) into care delivery and identify innovative uses. Identifying best practices for proactive use of SM is a key factor in its successful implementation and sustained use by VA clinical care team members and veterans. Objectives A collaborative project solicited input from VA clinical care teams about their local practices using SM to provide access to proactive patient-centered care for veterans and enhance work flow. Methods This project implemented a single-item cross-sectional qualitative electro-nic survey via internal e-mail to local coordinators in all 23 Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs). Content analysis was used to manage descriptive data responses. Descriptive statistics described samp le characteristics. Results VA clinical care team members across 15 of 23 VISNs responded to the questionnaire. Content analysis of 171 responses produced two global domains: (1) benefits of SM and (2) SM best practices. Benefits of SM use emphasize enhanced and efficient communication and increa sed access to care. Care team members incorporate SM into their daily clinical practices, using it to provide services before, during, and after clinical encounters as a best practice. SM users suggest improvements in veteran care, clinical team workflow, and efficient use of health resources. Cli nical team members ...
Source: Applied Clinical Informatics - Category: Information Technology Source Type: research