Capstone presenter: Sherika McCoy

Presentation March 28, 2021

Title: Patient perspective: The effects of patient portal usage on healthcare quality
Capstone track: Project

The following summary is on Capstone project presented by Sherika McCoy and completed on

March 28, 2021 at 1pm. Sherika completed her project on Patient perspective: The effects of patient

portal usage on healthcare quality. Research facts were given on the benefits and disadvantages of a

healthcare systems patient portal. Moreover, how patient friendly the program is for those that have

the knowledge of technology and how challenging the system is for those that are not technology savvy.

Sherika also gave me insight on the process that brought patient portals to become a reality.

Creating the pathway of EMR (Electronic medical records system) enabled technically to take healthcare

a step further. Sherika also speaks about the benefit of being out of state and needing medical care.

EMR has made it so physicians are spending extra hours trying to find out what a patient’s medical

history is, like in a time before EMR was created. Having all medical records available electronically

enables better care and better medical outcomes. Also, the disadvantages that come along with a

patient portal are those that are not savvy to technology or they may be savvy but do not have the

means to use the portal. More explaining stated that while physicians may prefer their patients to use

such a tool. Our society still has populations that do not have a computer or smart phone to operate the

system. In addition, is the population that really gets confused by the whole computer concept. Where

to click, what to write and how to receive/send a message.

We then move on to the studies that have been run, to see if a patient portal is actually a good

idea and if patients are utilizing it. Sherika did a great job at stating The National Coordinators Office

stats. Out of 52% only 28% looked at the portal. However, out of 93 million American is the number of
people that use social media, or any other kind of internet surfing is high. Yet, they still are reluctant to

use a patient portal that will get them in touch with their providers/office quicker.

To finish the presentation, Sherika discussed how she is going to perform her own research to

the facts stated by society. She spoke in detail about how she would carry out the interviews of 15

patients, but no more than 20. In addition, how she would obtain the interviewees. This presentation

was very well put together, structure was perfect, and her slideshow grabbed the viewers’ attention.

I have to say that working in healthcare and in management, I deal with this topic occasionally.

The organization is always trying to get more patients signed up for mychart in the UF Health system.

We have multiple patients that are elderly or just do not have the resources to use the patient portal.

That is hard to get that information across to the organization leaders, that for a lot of our population,

sign up and usage is not going to be achieved.