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More than 1.3 million GP appointments booked online
Monday, 28 May 2018
eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth
More than 1.3 million GP appointments have been booked online via a patient portal in New Zealand.
More than 400,000 repeat prescriptions have also been ordered electronically, saving patients a phone call or visit to their GP.
Figures gathered by eHealthNews from New Zealand’s three main patient portal providers reveal that patients are increasingly using digital services to communicate with their GP practice.
Around 550,000 of New Zealand’s 4.5 million patients (12 per cent) are registered with a patient portal and 545 practices offer one. A patient portal is a secure online site where patients can access their health information and interact with their GP.
ConnectMed provides a patient portal to 125 practices and says more than one million patient appointments have been booked electronically via the service.
ConnectMed co-founder Ryan Thatcher says use of the booking function grew from 130,000 in 2015 to 450,000 appointments booked last year and figures are expected to jump again in 2018.
Ryan says most clinics have turned on the ability for patients to order repeat prescriptions – nearly 100,000 have been ordered online – and about half are now offering access to lab results.
The company has also recently added video consultation functionality via the patient portal and has a few practices using it.
ManageMyHealth patient portal, provided by Medtech, has more than 330,000 registered users and more than 120,000 users of its mobile app.
The company says patient numbers are always on the rise and grew by 70 per cent last year.
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What you have here are New Zealanders having what patients need and want, provided by a commercial portals and subscriber GPs etc. delivering the Digital Health goods on an absolute shoe-string while Australia wastes billions on a system that will never offer prescription repeats, booking and so on! And no need for opt-out – those who need the service can get it simply and easily and the rest of us can get on with our lives!
The whole myHR effort needs to be re-cast to be patient and clinically centric and voluntary – not administratively centric and almost compulsory as it presently is!
David.
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