Malpractice claims might also decline, they said.
"This whole area of patient-interactive health-care management is here to stay," said Gordon Woodrow, a former regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who is now chief spokesman for CarePartners.
With its touch screen and a card swipe for patients to optionally identify themselves, Wellby strongly resembles an ATM. But instead of cash, the kiosk dispenses questions to patients just after they see the doctor, to collect timely feedback on those visits. The questions, which can be tailored to a person's specific disease or ailment, are designed to ensure that patients understand their diagnoses and any prescribed remedies.
The underlying premise: that patients are reluctant to criticize their doctors or tell them that they don't understand something they've said.
"People will tell the computer the truth faster than they will tell a person," said Martha Jean Minniti. A registered nurse with a long entrepreneurial history, she is one of CarePartners' four founders.
Those health-care professionals formed the company five years ago, when the concept of electronic health records was in its infancy and the question of how patients would fit into that high-tech world was uncertain.
Taking a cue from banks, CarePartners settled on the touch screen as a means of communication between patients and their health providers.
They first tested the concept in a health-care system near Pittsburgh, eager to see whether patients would even interact with a touch-screen system. They got what they considered encouraging results: 40 percent participation from a population that was 100 percent Medicaid-eligible and considered technology-averse.
