Empowering patients to improve the quality of their care: design and implementation of a shared health maintenance module in a US integrated healthcare delivery network.

We describe a health maintenance module within a personal health record designed to improve the quality of routine preventive care for patients in a large integrated healthcare delivery network. This module allows patients and their providers to share an online medical record and decision support tools. Our preliminary results indicate that this approach is well-accepted by patients and their providers and has significant potential to facilitate patient-provider communication and improve the quality of routine health maintenance care. Further research will determine the long term impact and sustainability of this approach.