I am not involved in MU stuff, so I only use the system where it does good things for me or my patients. Over 95% of our patients use e-mail, and we explain that they will need to come in to discuss results if they cannot access them electronically. I cannot efficiently do telephone tag any longer. Here is my flow:
If a lab comes in from Quest, I print it to the UpDox printer, send it to the patient portal. I then send the result to the patient with comments which may or may not be templates. I do this myself; my nurse would not know what comments I wanted to make. I copy the comments (Cntrl-A, Cntrl-C) before I hit "Send". Then I return to the lab signoff screen, paste the comments into the sign-off window, and sign it off.
Things coming in as Faxes are already in UpDox. My staff assigns incoming documents to the correct provider by setting a colored flag in UpDox, and the provider filters for his/her tag. I will import to the chart, and if appropriate (say, an x-ray result) will send it to the patient via the portal, again with comments.
If I want to just send a message to a patient, I will hit "Create" in UpDox, and send a message to the portal. That remains secure and compliant. Patients can initiate secure messages to me via the portal as well.
Because of the need for make medical decisions based on whatever I send, I do not involve staff in any of this beyond the initial filtering of incoming faxes. It takes me about 15 minutes in the morning to do everything. I do it when I first get to work and am drinking a cup of coffee. I do not consider it odious.
