Inpatient Enrollment of Patient Portal App

Mass General Brigham

Status: Completed

Conditions: Orthopedic Disorder

Treatments: Other: Patient Gateway

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03431259

2017P001594

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study aims to determine if inpatient enrollment into a patient communication app improves clinic follow-up of orthopedic trauma patients and improves survey completion rates after orthopedic trauma.

Full description

Follow-up in trauma is historically poor. As a result, outcomes from trauma are difficult to collect via surveys and are often significantly influenced by selection bias. Patient interaction apps like Patient Gateway are thought to facilitate greater participant involvement and adherence to treatment regimens. The investigators will explore if inpatient enrollment into Patient Gateway would improve clinic follow-up rates. Increasing follow-up rates could improve the quality of care delivered.

In addition, self-administered survey questionnaires are an important data collection tool in clinical practice, public health research and epidemiology. However, survey completion rates are typically poor in orthopaedic trauma.

With the evaluation of modern technology, electronic applications are being increasingly used in both hospital and personal settings. In outpatient clinics, questionnaires to measure outcomes and monitor quality of care are administered by staff members using hospital owned tablet devices. Recently, applications to complete these surveys on personal devices have been developed.

In a recent Cochrane review on the comparison of self-administered survey questionnaire responses collected using mobile apps versus other methods it was concluded that there are no data available on response rates. The investigators will attempt to address this question.

All Patient Gateway naïve patients aged 18 years or older able to consent for themselves and admitted to the hospital for an orthopedic condition with the need for outpatient follow-up will be invited to participate in this study. Exclusion criteria will be patients unable to consent for themselves, inability to communicate in English, and no possession of a smartphone.

Enrollment: 232 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• admitted to the hospital for an orthopedic condition with the need for outpatient follow-up
• able to consent for themselves

Exclusion criteria

• unable to consent for themselves
• inability to communicate in English
• no possession of a smartphone

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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232 participants in 2 patient groups

Enrollment group

Experimental group

Treatment:

Other: Patient Gateway

Information group

No Intervention group