Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

10-2022

Abstract

Sustaining patient portal use is a major problem for many healthcare organizations and providers. If this problem can be successfully addressed, it could have a positive impact on various stakeholders. Through the lens of cognitive dissonance theory, this study investigates the role of health professional encouragement as well as patients’ security concerns in influencing continuous use intention and deep structure usage among users of a patient portal. The analysis of data collected from 177 patients at a major medical center in the Midwestern region of the United States shows that health professional encouragement helps increase the continuous use intention and deep structure usage of the patient portal, while security concerns impede them. Interestingly, health professional encouragement not only has a direct positive influence on continuous use intention and deep structure usage but also lowers the negative impact of security concerns on them. The research model explains a substantial variance in continuous use intention (i.e., 40%) and deep structure usage (i.e., 32%). The paper provides theoretical implications as well as practical implications to healthcare managers and providers to improve patient portal deep structure usage and sustained use for user retention.

Keywords

Patient portal, Health professional encouragement, Security concerns, Continuous use, Deep structure usage, Consumer health IT

Discipline

Health Information Technology | Information Security

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Areas of Excellence

Digital transformation

Publication

Information Systems Frontiers

Volume

24

Issue

5

First Page

1483

Last Page

1496

ISSN

1387-3326

Identifier

10.1007/s10796-021-10161-5

Publisher

Springer

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