Promises and Challenges of Medical Patient Healthcare Portals in Underserved Communities

Abstract

As a safety-net medical center that serves many underserved communities, Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia (EMCP) faces many challenges in providing healthcare to its communities. To improve those services, EMCP has released a new IT healthcare portal (app). This chapter describes some of the promises and challenges EMCP is currently facing in their attempts to convince communities in its catchment area to adopt that healthcare portal. The challenges are discussed in the contexts of poor social determinants of health (SDOH), unique social factors, as well as the importance of managing community trust in EMCP within the broader contexts of underserved communities of which the new portal is only part of the story. This is not a typical case of IT adoption. The challenges at hand are not only technical but to a large degree social, dealing in part with issues of cultural diversity, perceived lack of respect, and poor health literacy.