Understanding the Role of Patient Portals in Fostering Interprofessional Collaboration Within Mental Health Care Settings: Mixed Methods Study

Background: Patient portals are web-based systems through which patients can access their personal health information and communicate with their clinicians. The integration of patient portals into mental health care settings has been evolving over the past decade, as cumulated research to date has highlighted the potential role of portals in facilitating positive health outcomes. However, it is currently unknown whether portal use can foster interprofessional collaboration between clinicians and patients or whether the portal is a tool to support an already established collaborative relationship.

Objective: This mixed methods study aimed to understand how the use of a patient portal within mental health settings can impact the level of interprofessional collaboration between clinicians and patients.

Methods: This study was conducted in a large mental health care organization in Ontario, Canada. A convergent mixed methods design was used, where the primary data collection methods included questionnaires and semistructured interviews with patients who had experience using a portal for their mental health care. For the quantitative strand, participants completed the Health Care Communication Questionnaire and the Self-Empowerment subscale of the Mental Health Recovery Measure at 3 time points (baseline, 3 months of use, and 6 months of use) to measure changes in scores over time. For the qualitative strand, semistructured interviews were conducted at the 3-month time point to assess the elements of interprofessional collaboration associated with the portal.

Results: For the quantitative strand, 113 participants completed the questionnaire. For the Health Care Communication Questionnaire scores, the raw means of the total scores at the 3 time points were as follows: baseline, 43.01 (SD 7.28); three months, 43.19 (SD 6.65); and 6 months, 42.74 (SD 6.84). In the univariate model with time as the only independent variable, the scores did not differ significantly across the 3 time points (P=.70). For the Mental Health Recovery Measure scores, the raw mean total scores at the 3 time points were as follows: baseline, 10.77 (SD 3.63); three months, 11.09 (SD 3.81); and 6 months, 11.10 (SD 3.33). In the univariate model with time as the only independent variable, the scores did not differ significantly across the 3 time points (P=.34). For the qualitative strand, 10 participants were interviewed and identified various elements of how interprofessional collaboration can be supplemented through the use of a patient portal, including improved team functioning, communication, and conflict resolution.

Conclusions: Although the quantitative data produced nonsignificant findings in interprofessional collaboration scores over time, the patients' narrative accounts described how the portal can support various interprofessional collaboration concepts, such as communication, leadership, and conflict resolution. This provides useful information for clinicians to support the interprofessional relationship when using a portal within a mental health setting.

International Registered Report Identifier (irrid): RR2-10.1136/bmjopen-2018-025508.