Healthcare is battling a phenomenon known as “portalitis.” Once considered innovative solutions, patient portals, member portals, digital health solutions, and health apps have proliferated to the point where consumers often find themselves navigating more than 10 portals. This complex web has become an overwhelming barrier rather than a gateway to access, especially as consumers must log in to multiple places, remember a password, and go through an authentication process for each. But, what if we could solve all this by taking a selfie?
In a recent Discuss & Disrupt webinar, “Are Selfies the Cure for Portalitis? Direct Access to Your Medical History Without Portals,” industry leaders from CLEAR, athenahealth, CommonWell Health Alliance, and b.well Connected Health convened to unpack a challenge that has long plagued healthcare, the lack of medical record access.
Moderated by Sara Zywicki, b.well’s Chief Product Officer with over 25 years of experience in healthcare technology and digital innovation, the panel brought together a powerhouse of healthcare leaders. David Bardan from CLEAR, with 15 years of healthcare innovation experience; Jill DeGraff, b.well’s SVP of Privacy, Regulatory Affairs, and Compliance, a legal expert with two decades of experience in healthcare and technology; Sam Lambson from athenahealth, a healthcare technology strategist leading innovative solutions in interoperability; and Paul Wilder from CommonWell Health Alliance, a health IT leader who helped thousands of primary care providers advance meaningful use of health technology, united to dissect the complex challenges of medical data access.
For those who’d rather skip the hour-long deep dive into healthcare’s data dilemma, we’ve distilled the key insights from this groundbreaking webinar. Consider this your cheat sheet to understand how digital identity and technology are about to revolutionize individual access to medical records.
The Human Cost of Portalitis
“Portalitis” is the maze of multiple logins, fragmented records, and countless barriers consumers face when trying to access their own health information.
The stage was set with a deeply personal story about her friend Linda, whose medical journey exposed the brutal inefficiencies of healthcare data systems. Linda’s experience wasn’t just frustrating; it was potentially life-threatening. Navigating through 10 different healthcare systems in 15 weeks, she faced impossible barriers: being asked to fax urgent medical documents, struggling to find specialist referrals, and encountering systemic obstacles at every turn.
When Jason Sherwin from CLEAR first spoke, he dove right into the authentication problem. “Let’s talk about how we’ve been doing identity verification,” he said, describing the outdated knowledge-based authentication that requires patients to answer increasingly obscure questions about their past. “Roughly 40% of patients fail these authentication attempts,” Sherwin explained. “I recently went through one of these flows myself and got one question wrong, which immediately kicked me to a call center.”
Jill DeGraff from b.well picked up the thread, highlighting the broader context. “We’ve actually had an individual right of access encoded in HIPAA from the beginning,” she noted. “But there’s been a steady drumbeat to support patient access, particularly with the Cures Act passed nine years ago.”
Paul Wilder from CommonWell Health Alliance brought a particularly sharp perspective to the conversation. “The administrative workflows in healthcare are critical,” he said. “Take a simple question like ‘Have your medications changed?’ Most patients can’t actually answer that definitively.” He was blunt about the current state of healthcare apps, “They don’t have data. There’s no way they could be doing a better job of informing me about my health if they don’t have access to my data in the first place.”
Sam Lambson from athenahealth offered a more optimistic technological solution. He discussed how AI could help by summarizing complex medical information and creating more integrated medical records. “We can parse outside records and bring them in as discrete components,” Lambson explained, “creating a more curated chart for patients.”
The conversation repeatedly circled back to a fundamental issue. Patients don’t know where their data is, and current systems make accessing it nearly impossible. “Patients don’t know where their darn data is,” Paul Wilder emphasized. “If you ask geriatric patients about their medications at different times of the day, you’ll get completely different answers.”
Digital Identity as the Key to Medical Record Access
Jason Sherwin saw hope in emerging technologies, particularly biometric solutions. “We’re seeing large brands leverage biometric technology,” he said. “Clear partners with LinkedIn to verify individuals across their network, and we’re helping streamline the authentication experience.”
Jill DeGraff added depth to the conversation, emphasizing the broader implications. “We’re not limited to a single identity solution vendor,” she explained. “There are multiple vendors in the market, which is proof that the market is ready for a consumer-grade trusted identity solution.”
As the webinar drew to a close, the panelists imagined a future without legacy constraints. Paul Wilder provocatively suggested a national healthcare identifier, while Jason Sherwin emphasized the potential of digital identity as a foundation for secure, patient-centered healthcare.
“We in healthcare have two representations,” Sherwin concluded. “The fax machine and the clipboard. Together, we have an opportunity to replace the clipboard. There are opportunities to connect all the data that’s out there, and identity is the foundation to doing that.”
Disrupting Portalitis with Technology and Interoperability
The breakthrough came with the discussion of the TEFCA Network, a landmark collaboration between Commonwealth Health Alliance and athenahealth. This innovation creates the first successful end-to-end medical record access through a fully federated digital ID solution. The impact is profound, patients can now securely verify identity with a single trusted credential and instantly locate medical records across multiple providers.
Healthcare is on the brink of transformation, with digital identity and patient access at its core. The days of fragmented, frustrating medical record access may finally be numbered. It’s all about putting individuals back in control of their most personal information.
The webinar concluded with a sense of hope and urgency. Healthcare isn’t just about treating patients anymore; it’s about empowering them with access, understanding, and control over their own medical journey.
