Demographic Use Of Health IT Aligns With Overall Tech Trends … Is The Same True For How To Increase Use?

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

“Patient mix” is an incredibly important term in healthcare, and a concept that too frequently gets overlooked. As Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 3 (with its emphasis on patient engagement) progresses, your clients won’t be able to afford to continue that mistake.

In order to properly address patient portal, messaging, and data security needs, you will have to be aware of the demographic nature of the populations your clients service and address them accordingly.

Trends In HIT Use

A recent report from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has revealed significant disparities in access to and use of HIT across racial, income, and geographic demographics. These were most notable in several areas including:

• Race, with Hispanic use lagging behind Black, White, and Asian
• Education, with use significantly lower among study participants with two-year degrees or less.
• Income, with users making under $50K annually showing much lower rates of HIT use
• Geography, with use in rural areas lagging behind urban and suburban designations

The only area (among provider emailing, result viewing, smartphone app use, and text message communication with providers) that didn’t show significant differences in use across any demographic was text messaging.

Answers Outside Of Healthcare

Your clients have likely not considered demographic-specific answers to increasing tech engagement, but researchers outside of healthcare have.

Research on increasing tech engagement by demographic is addressed in the Journal Of Business Research paper, “Using The Technology Acceptance Model To Explain How Attitudes Determine Internet Usage: The Role Of Perceived Access Barriers And Demographics.” It focuses on tech underuse by age, education, and income level and proposes solutions in engaging these individual groups more effectively, specifically emphasizing the fact that use discrepancies are frequently an issue of perception, more than actual access. For example, while many of your clients might assume that the elderly do not understand the importance of the Internet, the paper states, “For example, our data suggest that firms should not allocate resources on promotional efforts to educate older consumers about the usefulness of the Internet. Our findings indicate that older consumers understand the relevance of the Internet to their lives but, unfortunately, perceive the Internet as difficult to use and costly.”

The study found that among minority and lower income participants superficially, cost was an issue best addressed by changing perceptions of the affordability of Internet access by implementing measures that work toward goals including promotions that educate lower income consumers about how the Internet aligns with personal goals, engaging them in marketing programs, and developing trade-in/up-grade plans to “reduce fears of loss due to obsolescence.”