Web Address: https://mpsrs.us/WPortal Funded by the Agency for Health Care Reseach and Quality (AHRQ) in September of 2007, OKPRN has set out to design, test, and implement a web-based patient Wellness Portal that interfaces with the existing Preventive Services Reminder System (PSRS), a clinician interface to patient preventive and wellness records. A Wellness Portal is a secure website that provides access to personalized health information that helps individuals improve their general well-being. It focuses on wellness, lifestyle, and preventive services and facilitates patient-centered, continuous care through a "medical home." The Wellness Portal can help individuals maintain a record of their personal profile, history of preventive services, personal risk factors, care preferences, vital signs, symptoms, and medical encounters. They can also get personalized care recommendations, participate in self-education activities, and communicate securely with their primary care clinicians.

 

The three-year Wellness Portal project has the following aims:

1) To develop, field test, and refine an Internet-based patient Wellness Portal linked to PSRS to facilitate patient-centered, preventive care in primary care practices;

2) To determine the impact of the Wellness Portal on the process of patient-centered preventive care by examining the behavior and experiences of both patients and providers and the degree to which recommended services are individualized; and

3) To develop model Wellness Portal practices and disseminate the Wellness Portal technology and knowledge derived from Aims 1 and 2 findings. As a result of the Wellness Portal approach, we expect that activated patients and transformed medical practices will be more likely to engage in proactive, patient-centered care, and that this will result in more consistent delivery of appropriate preventive services to the right patients at the right times.

The Wellness Portal has been developed and currently being studied by the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Department of Family and Preventive Medicine in primary care practices. Only study participants have access to the Portal at this time. However, it will be available to patients in other practices after the study has been completed.