The healthcare landscape is transforming, moving from treating individual illnesses to proactively managing the health of entire patient groups. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are the technological backbone of this shift, providing the comprehensive data necessary for this broader view of health. Improving overall health outcomes requires a systematic approach to care, including tracking and engaging with people not scheduled for an immediate visit. This necessity has given rise to specialized terminology within EHR systems to categorize and track a provider’s active patient roster, allowing care teams to organize responsibilities around a defined group of individuals.
Defining the Patient Panel
The technical term for a managed group of current patients assigned to a specific provider or care team within an EHR system is the Patient Panel. This panel represents the distinct set of individuals for whom a clinician or team is accountable for providing continuous, comprehensive health management. The process of formally assigning patients to this list is known as empanelment, which establishes a clear relationship for ongoing care. Unlike a general registry, this defined group focuses on patients for active management. A panel is typically a dynamic list, continually updated as patients join the practice, change providers, or become inactive. The panel often includes patients seen within a specified time frame, such as the last 12 to 18 months, reflecting an active treatment relationship. The size and composition of a patient panel are factors used to determine a provider’s workload, supporting a move away from measuring productivity only by the number of in-person visits.
Primary Uses in Health Management
The core application of patient panels is enabling a shift toward a proactive model of care known as panel management. Having a defined list allows providers to systematically identify and reach out to patients who require specific interventions before a problem arises. This administrative utility allows staff to run reports identifying all members of the panel who are due for preventative services, such as vaccinations or screenings. Panels are also essential for managing chronic diseases, allowing care teams to identify patients, for example, whose A1C levels have not been checked recently.
Panels are also used to implement risk stratification, which involves analyzing the health data of the group to identify patients at the highest risk for future health complications. This stratification allows the care team to efficiently allocate resources, concentrating efforts on individuals needing more intensive support or preventative outreach. Analyzing the panel as a whole is instrumental in measuring and improving quality metrics, such as the percentage of patients with controlled blood pressure. Panels help close “gaps in care” by targeting outreach to individuals who have missed recommended follow-up appointments, lab tests, or medication refills. This systematic management improves adherence to clinical guidelines and supports continuous, high-quality care.
Data Sources and Maintenance
The construction of a patient panel relies on structured data pulled directly from the EHR system using specific filtering criteria. Key data sources include patient demographics (such as age and gender), clinical data (like diagnosis codes and medication lists), and administrative data (such as the date of the last encounter and the assigned primary care provider). Algorithms are used to resolve complex issues, such as attributing a patient who sees multiple providers to a single care team.
Maintenance requires automated filtering processes to ensure the list accurately reflects the current patient group. This includes regularly updating the panel size and composition to remove patients who have not had an active visit within the practice’s defined time frame. Since patient panels contain highly sensitive protected health information, their maintenance is governed by strict data security and privacy protocols, such as those mandated by HIPAA.