encouraging patient portal use

Increase Patient Portal Use With These 8 Tips

1. Mass enrollment. If you have trouble getting patients to sign up, pull the email addresses for any patients who have...
2. Get the whole office involved. Your staff is key to a successful rollout and obtaining a high-level of patient...
3. Use every patient handout or marketing collateral as an opportunity to promote the...

Full Answer

How would you encourage patients to use patient portals?

Here are nine ways to improve patient portal engagement.Enroll at the first appointment. ... Auto-enroll to schedule online appointments. ... Include a link to the portal when patients sign in. ... Link your portal sign up on all correspondence. ... Optimize for desktop and mobile. ... Empower all staff to sign patients up. ... Offer incentives.More items...•

What are the benefits of patient portals?

The truth is, there are a lot of benefits to using a patient portal for providers.Better Patient Communication. ... Streamline Patient Registration and Administrative Tasks. ... Greater Focus on Patient Care. ... Better Patient-Physician Relationships. ... Improve Clinical Outcomes. ... Optimize Medical Office Workflow.

How do you improve patient portal?

Here are some ways to encourage patient enrollment:Include information about the patient portal on your organization's website.Provide patients with an enrollment link before the initial visit to create a new account.Encourage team members to mention the patient portal when patients call to schedule appointments.More items...•

How do you optimize patient portals for patient engagement?

Make enrollment open to all patients. Have staff manage portal workflow and communication before engaging providers directly. Aim to establish efficient workflows and policies, and avoid burdening providers with troubleshooting during initial rollout. The whole staff should be involved in promoting the patient portal.

Do patient portals improve outcomes?

The study, published in MIS Quarterly, found that meaningful patient portal use results in fewer hospitalizations, a decrease in emergency department visits, and lower readmission rates.

What are the benefits and challenges of using patient portals?

What are the Top Pros and Cons of Adopting Patient Portals?Pro: Better communication with chronically ill patients.Con: Healthcare data security concerns.Pro: More complete and accurate patient information.Con: Difficult patient buy-in.Pro: Increased patient ownership of their own care.

Why do patients not use patient portals?

Disadvantages of patient portals result in these lower rates of use. For some people, they avoid using the portals altogether for reasons like security issues, low health literacy, or lack of internet. Even for those who do access their accounts, there are still other disadvantages of patient portals.

How can patient compliance with portal registration be increased?

Offer an incentive for patient registration, such as entering the patient's name in a drawing for a prize (such as a restaurant gift card) or offering an incentive (such as a movie ticket or waived co-pay). Host a contest for staff, awarding a prize for the employee who signs up the most new patients for the portal.

Do you need to set patient portal enrollment?

You need to set patient portal enrollment as a standard in your practice from their first appointment. Encourage them that it will make future processes, like prescription refills and appointment scheduling more convenient.

Can you schedule an appointment online?

Your patients may prefer to schedule their appointments online for convenience. Program your online appointment booking system to automatically enroll them in your patient portal. Make sure to highlight the benefits like appointment reminders (via text or email) and online payment options.

Is patient portal engagement good?

Patient portal engagement is a challenge, especially among low-income people, but optimizing for mobile will help level the playing field. Patient portals that are designed for smartphones will further improve patient use of the portal since over 81 percent of people in the United States now own a smartphone.

Promote At Every Opportunity

Not all of your patients will be as responsive to your initial request for them to use the patient portal. For patients who are more cautious about using the portal or seem hesitant, you’ll have to promote the benefits of the portal at every opportunity.

Give Incentives

If you’re still having trouble getting patients to adopt your patient portal, another tactic you could try is using incentives. Offering incentives for patients to access your patient portal could help drive utilization and could also help you promote different benefits of the portal.

Why do older patients use patient portals?

Just because your patients are older does not mean they are incapable of using the patient portal technology. The study published in the Annals of Family Medicine found that older patients and patients with chronic conditions were more likely to create a patient portal account, and many of these elderly patients often experience chronic conditions. The patient portal has become a fantastic tool for managing chronic conditions. Since these patients have more appointments to schedule and more lab results to view, the portal can ease these processes and keep them well-informed on their health. While they may take more time to learn the technology, elderly patients are often some of your most engaged patients, so continue to encourage portal use among these older patients as well as your younger demographic.

How to speed up a patient's visit to the office?

To speed up a patient’s visit to the office, let them know of any questionnaires or medical history forms they can fill out on the portal ahead of time. When a patient checks out, be sure to remind them that bills are payable through the portal as well.

What is incentive in healthcare?

An incentive can motivate patients to sign up for and engage with the portal. To encourage use, patients who sign up for the portal within a certain time frame could be entered in a drawing to win a prize or a small discount on a bill for the first one they pay through the portal. If more patients make use of the portal to schedule appointments, ...

What is a feature focused conversation?

A feature-focused conversation may be highlighting things like secure messaging and appointment scheduling. Let’s flip the conversation to focus on the benefits. Instead of secure messaging being the main idea you communicate to the patients, talk about being able to directly communicate with the provider at any hour. If you prefer to speed up the appointment scheduling process or make appointments with the office outside of business hours, the patient portal provides a great option for appointment scheduling in a way that may be more convenient for your patients. Framing the conversation in a way that brings into mind the benefits of using the portal will encourage patients to sign up for and use the portal.

What is the goal of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015?

The goal of MACRA is to improve the quality of health care for Medicare patients, and this is accomplished by shifting the payment system from fee-for-service to care focused on results and value. MACRA financially motivates practices to engage patients in patient portal use in hopes that it will improve efficiency and overall population health. Although most practices agree this is a worthwhile endeavor, the process of getting patients to sign up and use the portal can be cumbersome and comes with many challenges.

Is it important to get patients to sign up for portal?

It is not as simple as getting your patients signed up with portal accounts. It is important that you also get them to engage in the content you are sharing with them before ...

Improving Care with Patient Portals

Patients can sometimes feel overwhelmed during a doctor’s appointment, whether due to unexpected news or complex medical terminology. Fortunately, patient portals allow providers to share clinical summaries after a screening or check-up, so patients can then easily reference their medical history or lab results on their own time.

Understanding Low Portal Adoption Rates

As helpful as this technology can be, it still isn’t being used to its full potential. At two-thirds of hospitals, less than a quarter of patients have activated their portal. Despite our constantly-connected world, many patients still don't use or see the value in the patient portal.

Improving the Use of Patient Portals

Nearly all healthcare facilities have a portal system in place, and many practitioners are trying to encourage their patients to use the technology. It’s important for healthcare providers to understand their patients’ barriers to adoption and how to best address and counter them.

What is a patient portal?

Patient portals offer the most convenient way for patients to schedule their office or telehealth appointments, even if the office is closed. Moreover, Portals can remind patients of annual physicals, important prevention screenings, and vaccinations.

What should you consider when planning a portal launch?

When you are planning the launch and implementation process, you should consider various factors such as your practice’s resources, priorities, and culture. This will help build confidence and acceptance of the portal among clinicians, staff, and patients with minimal resistance.