Behavioral Science
The Use of Electronic Health Record-Based Messaging as a Means to Increase Diabetic Patient Medical Adherence
Julia Schnipper
Behavioral Science
Julia Schnipper
Electronic trigger (e-trigger) tools are designed to keep track of events or results over time in an organized manner. In particular, these tools all revolve around triggering responses from medical data and records (Murphy 2019). Recent increases in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus across the United States have highlighted a need to treat these patients and find an effective way to ensure that all diabetic individuals are attending their follow-up appointments. We developed an algorithm to identify patients that are high-risk for diabetes complications and that have not been seen at the recommended interval. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of sending out a message through the NYU patient portal, which is titled MyChart, on the follow-up rate and medical adherence of NYU diabetic patients. To date, we have identified 89 at-risk patients, of whom were randomized into either the intervention or the control group. We show that 10/24 (41.6%) of the individuals in the intervention group that read the MyChart message in this study attended their appointment. On the other hand, 3/21 (14.3%) of the individuals that did not read the MyChart message showed up to their follow-up appointment. To compare it to the control group which never received a MyChart message, only 9/44 (20.5%) of these individuals attended an appointment within 60 days after the study started. Individuals are oftentimes non-compliant with follow-up appointments most likely due to the inconveniences that follow-up appointments bring (i.e. cost and time). To increase the effectiveness of the MyChart message, I also studied the benefits of positive messaging framing as opposed to negative message framing following the study. Positively framed message outreach is better than no outreach (72% of individuals in a study I analyzed chose positive messages). With positive messaging framing, we were able to direct the MyChart message in a more optimistic lens by speaking about the solution and encouraging these patients to seek help to improve their hemoglobin A1c numbers. Consequently, MyChart was very effective in increasing the follow-up rate of these students because the application provided a new method for individuals to check their health status and receive these notifications in an easy manner.