Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2021, Public Health

Outpatient portal technology (OPP) can improve patient engagement. For pregnant women, this high level of engagement could have important implications for maternal and infant outcomes. There is a dearth in studies that characterize OPP use among pregnant women. Our academic medical center (AMC) implemented a system-wide OPP in 2011. The OPP includes functions that allow patients to access their personal health information (PHI), view and schedule appointments, and message their providers. Our study is among the few studies that characterizes OPP use in a historically understudied patient population. We built upon existing research using OPP server-side log files by executing a hierarchical clustering algorithm to group 7,663 pregnant women based on the proportion of use for each OPP function. We calculated proportions of use for each OPP function a woman engaged with and used these proportions as inputs for our cluster analysis. Women who visited a Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) provider for pregnancy were regarded as having high pregnancy-related risk, while those who only visited an Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) provider were considered as having normal pregnancy-related risks. Post-hoc analyses were performed using one-way ANOVA to further assess OPP use on key encounter characteristics. Use of the following OPP functions was examined within the cluster analysis: Visits (manage appointments), MyRecord (access PHI), Messaging (send/receive messages), and Billing (view bills, insurance information). Our study sample was predominantly represented by non-Hispanic white women between the ages of 25 and 34. The most frequently used functions at the patient level were MyRecord, Visits, Messaging and Billing, with frequency of use similar between pregnancy risk groups. Median OPP function use plateaued by the third trimester for each pregnancy risk group, with significantly more use among women with a high-risk pregnancy compared to those with a normal pregn (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Fareed Naleef PhD, MBA (Advisor); Hebert Courtney MD, MS (Committee Member); Schnell Patrick PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Biomedical Research; Health Care Management; Information Science; Obstetrics; Public Health; Systems Design; Systems Science