UCSF

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) signed into law in 2009 requires hospitals to provide patients with electronic access to their health information through an electronic personal health record (ePHR) in order to receive Medicare/Medicaid incentive payments for electronic health record (EHR) implementation. Little is known about who uses these systems or the impact these systems will have on patient outcomes in HIV care. This dissertation reviews the state of the literature on ePHR and HIV, discusses methods of measuring empowerment and activation, and presents pilot data on empowerment and activation in ePHR users and non-users in HIV-infected veterans receiving care at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.