Wearable devices and home monitoring tools now play a larger role in healthcare. Patients can track heart rhythms, blood pressure, glucose levels and other health information from home. They can also send this information through patient portals and remote monitoring programs. Healthcare providers often call this information patient-generated health data.
As your organization receives more of this information, questions can come up about who reviews it, where it goes and what patients expect after they send it.
What is patient-generated health data?
Patient data can come from wearable devices, home monitoring equipment and online tools. Common sources include:
- Alerts from wearable devices about irregular heart rhythms
- Reports from continuous glucose monitoring systems
- Readings from home blood pressure monitors
- Measurements from pulse oximeters
- Symptom logs or photographs sent through patient portals
- Data sent through remote monitoring programs
Your organization may receive much of this information outside office visits and inpatient settings. Because patients can send it at any time, questions can come up about who reviews it and how your team records it.
Questions that may arise during litigation
When a medical malpractice claim involves this information, the dispute may center on what happened after the data entered your systems. Courts and parties in litigation may look at factors such as:
- The provider’s access to the data
- How the data reached the right person or team
- The provider’s agreement to monitor the data
- What patients were told about monitoring
- Records showing when someone reviewed the data
- Policies for handling information from patients
For example, a patient may upload several days of high blood pressure readings to a portal or send repeated messages about abnormal glucose levels. In those cases, a claim may focus on how your organization received and recorded the information rather than whether the device gave accurate readings.
Why this issue deserves attention
No New York law currently requires healthcare providers to review every piece of information that patients send through wearables, patient portals or similar tools. At the same time, more patients now use these tools as part of their healthcare.
As courts address these issues, claims involving this information may become more common. An organization with clear processes for receiving and recording information from patients may be better able to explain how it handled the information if questions arise later.
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