A Sharp Move: Health Care System Develops Online Tool

Two years in the making and $2 million later, Sharp HealthCare has unveiled an online tool that allows patients to track their health and e-mail their doctor with any questions.

Called mySharp, the online portal also gives patients a way to pay bills, schedule appointments, refill prescriptions and check the results of any laboratory tests.

Since the system was set up late last year, it has enrolled approximately 15,000 patients, according to Donna Mills, CEO of Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Centers, one of Sharp HealthCare’s two affiliated medical groups, along with Sharp Community Medical Group. The 391-physician group serves about 100,000 patients a year. As of last month, Mills said all 20 of the medical group’s locations had implemented the new system.

“We spent two years just planning and designing,” Mills said. “We looked around the country at what worked and didn’t work at integrated health care systems.”

Studying Health Care Giants

Among the many systems studied, Mills said the group evaluated ones already in place at health care giants Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health. Approximately 3 million people are using Kaiser’s personal health record today, according to local spokeswoman Casey Hart.

Among the many findings of those efforts and focus group studies was that patients wanted an easy-to-use site that protected their information from getting into the wrong hands. Physicians, on the other hand, wanted to make sure patients understood their responses, Mills said.

“They didn’t want them to be startled by something that wasn’t significant,” Mills said.

Dr. Anthony Sacks, who practices family medicine at Sharp Rees-Stealy’s Mira Mesa office, said he’s noticing an average of one or two patient e-mails a day come through the system. He said his office is required to respond to the non-urgent messages in 48 hours.

“Patients are very excited about this because they feel a lot more connected,” he said. “They feel a lot more in control when they can control their blood pressure at home and when they can look at their results online.”

More Integrated System

Moving forward, Sacks said he expects a more integrated system with the electronic health record already in place at Sharp today.

“We are working on a fix with one click that would allow us to get into their electronic health record,” he said.

Other applications will take time to build into the system, Sharp officials said.

“If I see a patient that has an abnormal cholesterol, and I’d like to give them some information, right now that’s not part of the system,” Sacks said.

He said the physicians group also hopes to use mySharp as a tool for pushing preventive health care, by reminding patients when it’s time to schedule a pap smear or mammogram, for instance.

Eventually, Sacks said, patients might have the ability to build a larger view of their health history through services such as Google Health, a free online service that allows individuals to compile and store their health history.

“We are planning to have a button on this system where a patient would be able to transfer all their information that they have access to under Google Health,” he said.

Altogether, Mills said Sharp has spent $20 million, not including operating costs, between the mySharp system and implementing an electronic health record. She said Sharp could receive some reimbursement money next year through the economic stimulus package.

Sharp, a San Diego-based nonprofit health care system with more than 14,000 employees, reported net revenues of $2.1 billion for fiscal year 2009 and $1.9 billion for 2008.