Digital healthcare transaction volume at Kaiser Permanente posted a hefty increase in 2016 and a lot more patients are interacting online with Kaiser using their mobile device.

Kaiser, which has poured more than $400 million into digital healthcare and electronic health records technology in the past decade, reported that digital transactions occurring between the giant healthcare system and patients totaled about 678,000 interactions per day in 2016, an increase of 31.4% from 516,000 daily interactions in 2015. Kaiser defines its digital interactions as logins to its patient portal, telehealth visits, secure text messaging and related online transactions.

In its just-released annual report, Kaiser, which serves 10.7 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia, also says 61% of visits to KP.org are now done from a mobile device.

“Through advances in technology, Kaiser Permanente’s patients now access care and service more frequently via secure messaging, telehealth, clinics and mobile health vehicles,” the health system says. “In particular, more members used KP.org as a means to communicate with caregivers and access their medical information.”

Other key digital healthcare metrics for Kaiser also increased in 2016, including:

• Online drug refills. Members made 21.8 million electronic prescription requests last year, an increase of 12.4% from 19.4 million electronic prescriptions in 2015.
• Online laboratory results. Kaiser plan members viewed over 45.4 million lab results online in 2016, an increase of 12.1% from 40.5 million results in 2015.
• Kaiser patients and providers exchanged 23.6 million secure e-mails in 2016, up about 5.8% from 22.3 million in 2015.

Kaiser continues to place a premium on building an advanced technology platform for its health system, which includes 38 hospitals, 651 medical offices, 19,479 physicians and 52,214 nurses.

In October at the Salesforce.com annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard J. Tyson told attendees that Kaiser conducted nearly 110 million digital interactions with patients last year, ranging from digital doctor visits through telemedicine to apps Kaiser patients download on their smartphones or tablets. In all, the web accounted for 52% of patient interactions, Tyson told attendees. “The healthcare system was built where patients have to come to us for care,” he says. “We are trying to blow up that model.”