| Course | HLTH 4403 Healthcare Information Management |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 2 |
| Paper type | Patient portal evaluation |
| Length | 1,170 words, about 4 pages plus title and reference pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | American College of Education |
| Program | B.S. in Healthcare Administration |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for HLTH 4403 Module 2
Thirty-Six Percent Signed Up, Eighteen Percent in Spanish: Evaluating a Community Health Center Network's Patient Portal for Adults With Diabetes
Student Name
American College of Education
HLTH4403: Healthcare Information Management
Module 2 Assignment
Instructor Name
October 12, 2026
The Portal and the Question
The composite network of 12 community health centers examined in the first module offers its patients an online portal tied to its electronic health record. Through the portal, patients can see visit summaries, medication lists and test results, send secure messages to their care team, request refills and schedule some appointments. The network introduced it six years ago and has promoted it as a way to engage patients with chronic conditions, especially its 5,900 adults with diabetes.
Leadership has asked whether the portal is doing that. This evaluation examines five questions: who has access and who uses it, whether use is equitable, how the immediate release of results affects patients, what the portal costs the care team in workload, and whether it helps diabetes care. Data come from the portal's activity reports for the past year, the message log and a brief survey of 20 nurses and medical assistants.
What the Evidence Promises
Expectations for portals have often run ahead of the evidence. Goldzweig et al. (2013), in a systematic review of portals tied to provider records, found mixed evidence on patient outcomes and satisfaction, noting that portals might be more effective when combined with case management, and concluded that evidence of improvements in health outcomes, cost or utilization was insufficient. They also found that patient race and ethnicity, education or literacy and the burden of chronic illness could influence who used portals. Patient attitudes were generally positive.
That review sets a realistic standard for this evaluation. A portal is a channel, not a treatment. It is most likely to help when it is linked to a clinical process, such as a nurse following up on results, and it can widen gaps in care if the patients who most need attention are the least likely to use it.
Access and Use
Of about 29,500 adult patients seen in the past year, 36% have activated a portal account and 22% logged in at least once during the year. Among adults with diabetes, activation is 31%. Use is uneven. Activation is 44% among English-preferring adults and 18% among Spanish-preferring adults, who make up about a third of the network's adults. It is 21% among patients 65 and older and 27% among uninsured patients.
These gaps mirror national findings. Anthony et al. (2018), analyzing a nationally representative survey of insured adults, found that 63% had not used a portal in the prior year and that nonusers were more likely to be male, to be on Medicaid, to lack a regular provider and to have less than a college education; they also found that some groups were less likely to report being offered access at all. The Spanish gap at this network appears to begin at the same point. Staff survey responses indicate that portal sign-up is offered mainly at the front desk, in English, during busy check-ins.
Immediate Release of Results
Since April 2021, when the Cures Act rules against information blocking began to apply, the network has posted most finished test results to the portal without waiting, often before a clinician has reviewed them. Staff worried that patients would be alarmed by abnormal A1c values without explanation. Evidence from a large survey suggests those fears are real but limited. Steitz et al. (2023) put the question to more than 8,000 portal users and caregivers across four university health systems and found that 95.7% preferred to receive results immediately through the portal, including 95.3% of those whose results were not normal, while only 7.5% said that seeing a result ahead of any conversation with their clinician had left them more worried. Worry was more common after abnormal results, reported by 16.5% of those respondents compared with 5.0% of those with normal results.
At this network, the portal displays an A1c value with a reference range but no explanation in plain language or in Spanish, and nurses report calls from patients who saw a high value and did not know what it meant. The problem is not immediate release but release without context.
Workload for the Care Team
The portal generates about 3,900 secure messages a month. They arrive in a shared inbox for each care team, and the median time to a reply is 1.8 business days. About 14% are clinical questions that must be forwarded to a nurse or clinician; the rest concern refills, scheduling and forms. Nurses in the survey described messages as work added on top of full clinic days with no time set aside for it, and 12 of the 20 said they answered messages after their shift at least weekly. Messages in Spanish wait longer, because they are routed to the few bilingual staff members at each center.
Workload is a quality issue as well as a staffing one. A message about a low blood sugar that waits two days is a safety risk, and a portal that patients learn not to trust for timely answers will not engage them.
Usefulness for Diabetes Care
The portal currently supports diabetes care only passively. Patients can see results and send messages, but nothing links portal activity to the registry's outreach lists, and no one follows up when a patient with a high A1c views the result. Consistent with the review's observation that portals may work better alongside case management, the most promising use would connect the portal to the care coordinators who already call patients from the registry. At present, those coordinators do not use the portal at all. A coordinator who calls a patient about an overdue A1c has no way of knowing whether the patient already saw the last result, read the plain facts about it or sent a question that is still waiting in a nurse's inbox. The portal and the registry describe the same patients, but they were set up by different departments and never joined, so the network pays for two outreach channels that do not know about each other.
Recommendations
The network should make five changes. First, medical assistants should offer portal activation in the exam room on a tablet, in the patient's preferred language, rather than leaving it to the front desk, with activation tracked monthly by language, age and insurance. Second, A1c and other common results should display a short plain-language explanation in English and Spanish, written by the network's diabetes educators. Third, clinical messages should go to a nurse message pool staffed in scheduled blocks, with a one-business-day reply standard and bilingual coverage every day. Fourth, care coordinators should receive a daily list of patients with diabetes who viewed an A1c above 9%, so that a call follows the result. Fifth, the network should measure whether portal users with diabetes differ from nonusers in follow-up testing and control, adjusting for their differences, before claiming the portal improves outcomes. A portal reaches the patients who were already easiest to reach unless someone deliberately carries it to the others.
References
Anthony, D. L., Campos-Castillo, C., & Lim, P. S. (2018). Who isn't using patient portals and why? Evidence and implications from a national sample of US adults. Health Affairs, 37(12), 1948-1954. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05117
Goldzweig, C. L., Orshansky, G., Paige, N. M., Towfigh, A. A., Haggstrom, D. A., Miake-Lye, I., Beroes, J. M., & Shekelle, P. G. (2013). Electronic patient portals: Evidence on health outcomes, satisfaction, efficiency, and attitudes: A systematic review. Annals of Internal Medicine, 159(10), 677-687. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-159-10-201311190-00006
Steitz, B. D., Turer, R. W., Lin, C.-T., MacDonald, S., Salmi, L., Wright, A., Lehmann, C. U., Langford, K., McDonald, S. A., Reese, T. J., Sternberg, P., Chen, Q., Rosenbloom, S. T., & DesRoches, C. M. (2023). Perspectives of patients about immediate access to test results through an online patient portal. JAMA Network Open, 6(3), Article e233572. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.3572
HLTH 4403 Module 2 instructions, in plain terms
HLTH 4403 Module 2 typically asks you to evaluate a technology that patients use directly, most often a patient portal, though some sections allow a telehealth platform, an app or a kiosk. Prompts usually ask what the technology does, who uses it and who does not, what benefits and problems it brings for patients and staff, how it handles privacy and regulation, and what should change. Many versions expect evidence from published research alongside data or observations from the organization. You may be asked to use specific evaluation criteria, such as usability, access, safety and cost, or to devise your own. Pick something whose workings you know well enough to explain, and see whether Canvas expects screenshots or usage numbers.
How this HLTH 4403 Module 2 example is built
The example begins by describing the portal and setting out five questions the evaluation will answer, with data sources. A short evidence section uses a systematic review to set realistic expectations. Access and use are then measured overall and by language, age and insurance, and the gaps are compared with a national survey. Immediate release of results is explained through the federal rule and weighed with a large patient survey, which moves the local problem from the policy to missing explanations. Workload is measured with message volume, reply times and a staff survey. Clinical usefulness is judged against the review, and five recommendations answer the findings one by one.
HLTH 4403 Module 2 rubric: what full marks look like
Technology evaluation rubrics usually reward a clear description of the technology, evidence-based analysis of its benefits and limits, attention to equity and privacy, and practical recommendations. Graders look for evaluation criteria applied consistently rather than a list of pros and cons. Use of data, whether from the organization or published studies, is often the dividing line between average and high scores. Equity or access typically appears as its own criterion, so subgroup findings earn points. A regulatory or privacy criterion may cover rules such as information blocking or HIPAA. Recommendations score best when each responds to a finding. Scholarly sources and APA 7 formatting finish the rubric.
Common HLTH 4403 Module 2 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Portal papers slip when they repeat the vendor's list of features and call it an evaluation. Another frequent problem is claiming the portal improves outcomes without evidence, when the research on that point is mixed. Students also report a single adoption rate and miss the gaps inside it, which is usually where the most important finding lies. Include the staff side: a portal changes nurses' work as much as patients' experience. Explain any regulation you mention in a sentence rather than assuming the grader knows it. If your technology is a telehealth platform, a scheduling app or a hospital kiosk instead, send what you know about it with your prompt, and a Module 2 evaluation can be built on it.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official American College of Education document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
More HLTH 4403 and B.S. in Healthcare Administration sample papers
- HLTH 4403 Module 1: EHR Data Analysis
- HLTH 4403 Module 3: Online Risk Assessment Analysis
- HLTH 4403 Module 4: Wearable Device Assessment
- HLTH 4403 Module 5: Technology Adoption Proposal
- HLTH 4363 Module 2: Market Segmentation and Targeting
- HLTH 4363 Module 1: Marketing Situation Analysis
- RES 4353 Module 5: Plain-Language Evidence Brief
- HLTH 4343 Module 5: Population Service Proposal
HLTH 4403 Module 2 questions, answered
What does HLTH4403 Module 2 usually ask for?
The second HLTH4403 module often asks you to evaluate a patient portal or another consumer-facing health technology: who uses it, what it does well, its effect on staff and patients, its limits and how it should be improved. Your classroom's instructions decide the technology.
Do patient portals improve health outcomes?
A systematic review found the evidence insufficient to show improvements in outcomes, cost or utilization, although patient attitudes were generally positive and portals may work better alongside case management.
Why do patients see test results before their doctor calls?
Federal information blocking rules under the 21st Century Cures Act generally require that electronic health information, including most test results, be made available to patients without unnecessary delay.
Where can I find a free HLTH 4403 Module 2 sample paper?
This page has it. The complete Module 2 patient portal evaluation for a community health center network is posted, covering adoption gaps by language and age, immediate result release, messaging workload and five recommendations.
How do you evaluate a patient portal?
Look at activation and use overall and by subgroup, the experience of patients and staff, workload and response times, safety concerns and whether use is connected to clinical processes that could improve care.