Abstract
Background: With exponentially rising chlamydia and gonorrhea infection rates, healthcare providers are challenged with formulating strategies to ensure prompt testing, diagnosis, treatment, and retesting of individuals diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection (STI).
Objective: The objective of this project was to leverage the patient portal system to improve the sexual health outcomes of persons diagnosed with a STI at a community-based health center by promoting 3-month STI resting via retesting reminders.
Methods: This was a two-phased, quality improvement, pilot project that began with distribution of pamphlets serving as visual guides for patient portal registration. The second phase consisted of delivering portal retesting reminders to English-speaking patients over the age of 18 who had technological access to the organization’s patient portal and were diagnosed and treated for chlamydia and/or gonorrhea within a 3-month timeframe.
Results: A total of 200 pamphlets were disseminated and 25 reminder messages were delivered to 19 participants. An increase of 0.02% was observed in the center’s overall patient portal registration rate. Additionally, an improvement in STI retesting rate from 31.58% to 52.63% was noted, signifying a 21.05% increase following delivery of retesting reminders. However, only 3 of the 19 project participants attended retesting appointments as a result of the reminder messages, indicating the project intervention was responsible for 15.79% of the retesting increase.
Conclusions: Utilization of patient portal reminders are a cost-effective method of increasing patient engagement, promoting retesting guidelines, and facilitating a collaborative relationship between patients and providers.