This week, Elliot Health System’s electronic medical record (Epic) was upgraded to include a new tool: Healthwise. Southern New Hampshire Health will have access to Healthwise when they go live with Epic in November.
Healthwise is a nonprofit organization that provides evidence- and decision-based information to help patients with their health decisions. It contains more than 8,000 topics on health conditions, medical tests, procedures, medications, preventative care, immunizations, and everyday health and wellness issues.
Healthwise content is integrated within Epic. That means clinical users can access Healthwise content the way they would access patient education and discharge instructions in the past.
“Implementing Healthwise across our organization is one more step to becoming one single health system. Where we used to have a variety of different disparate content spread across departments, offices, and hospitals, we now all share one database for patient education and instruction content,” Lisa Rodger, EpicONE IT Project Manager, explains.
Patients can access the Healthwise content via the MyChart Patient Portal. Information from their recent visit will appear in that section like instructions, allergies, and immunizations.
Patients now also have access to the Healthwise Knowledge Base. The information is short, easy to scan, and written in plain language. Healthwise Patient Instructions also make it easier for patients to care for themselves. Each set of instructions goes over details such as post-op care, pre-op dietary restrictions, self-monitoring, and problems to watch for. It will also let patients understand when symptoms are normal and when to call the doctor.
“The Knowledge Base content is an excellent resource for patients to use to access even more information about their health questions for themselves, or their loved ones,” Rodger says.
Finally, patients will have access to user-tested videos that explain a wide variety of health topics in less than three minutes.
Healthwise offers patient education in English, Spanish, and 15 additional languages.
