Kaiser Permanente Survey Indicates Seniors Using Internet to Manage Health Care

According to a new study conducted by Kaiser Permanente, growing numbers of seniors have begun using the internet as a means of keeping track of their health care. Officials at the Kaiser Permanente California research facility in Oakland recently published a press release announcing how overwhelmingly satisfied Medicare beneficiaries are with their experience using the Internet to manage their care in many different ways. Kaiser’s personal health record system, My Health Manager, allows patients from Kaiser Permanente Colorado to Kaiser Hawaii to do everything from refilling prescriptions to contacting their physicians to learning more about their conditions.

In an age where youth seems to dominate, it is interesting to see how comfortable this older age group is with the computer technology required to use an online personal health record management system. Kaiser Permanente conducted an email survey to obtain these results, which there were 4,560 responses to. Respondents from Kaiser Permanente California, Kaiser Permanente Colorado and the seven other regions in the Kaiser network responded to questions regarding their comfort in using computers, Internet use habits, and current health status including chronic conditions and prescriptions. You might be astonished by the results; almost 90 percent of respondents identified as “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with Kaiser’s online health record system. All of this suggests that senior citizens are more computer-literate than most people give them credit for.

The biggest contributors to overall satisfaction with My Health Manager, according to the survey results, were the online appointment requests, the ability to email doctors and review test results online, and the prescription refill feature (this last one was a respondent favorite). Most of the people who responded to the survey (70 percent) also reported that they were in good or better health, and those who said they were in excellent health were also those who appeared to be the most actively engaged with managing their health care.

Kaiser Permanente officials have also drawn some conclusions from these survey results. Jan Oldenburg, senior practice leader of the Internet Services Group Health Portfolio for Kaiser Permanente, said the high satisfaction rate shows how a personal health record system that is thoughtfully designed can be convenient and easy for people from every demographic to use and enjoy. So, some might say that if an online health management system is designed intuitively enough, pretty much anyone can use it.

What was possibly the most surprising fact about these survey results, however, was the level of comfort that these Medicare beneficiaries have with computers. Survey respondents from Kaiser Permanente Colorado to Kaiser Permanente California said they were using the Internet every day and reviewing their medical record online a few times each month. This makes sense, though, because people become less mobile as they age. So a personal health record system such as My Health Manager might be the best way for a senior citizen to proactively manage their health care without leaving the house.