how to implement a patient portal

• Have all your staff fully trained on how the portal works and how to get patients connected. ...
• Create policies and procedures within your office about information you will push out to the portal and who is responsible for sending the information. ...
• Put up signs in your office promoting the new patient portal. ...
• Hand out flyers to your patients promoting the portal and the benefits of using it. ...
• Consider adding a computer station in a public area of your office. ...
• Mention your new patient portal on your office voice mail and encourage patients to ask the staff about setting up their own portal account. ...
Explain to patients during the visit what information you will send to their private Patient Portal account. ...
Send messages to patients using the Patient Portal. Meeting the Meaningful Use requirement of having 5% of your patients send a message to the physician may be challenging. ...
Be open with patients during their visit about the options for secure messaging with the doctor and what types of messages are appropriate for secure messaging versus making a call ...
When patients come in with family members, include those family members in the discussion about your MyQuest Patient Portal. ...

Full Answer

How do you set up a patient portal?

Explain to patients during the visit what information you will send to their private Patient Portal account. For example; lab results, a copy of the current medications they have been prescribed along with instructions given by the physician are valuable and will encourage patients to login to the portal. Send messages to patients using the Patient Portal. Meeting the Meaningful Use …

What are the benefits of a patient portal?

7 Steps to Implement a New Patient Portal Solution. Follow the steps below to help ensure the successful adoption of a new patient portal technology for your practice: 1. Research different solutions. It’s never wise to select the first tool you come across no matter how promising it may appear. Do your research, learn as much as possible about the array of patient portal solutions …

How to optimize patient portals for patient engagement?

Download PDF. Why implement a patient portal? For practices with a website, a portal could be the next logical step. It can improve practice efficiency by allowing patients to go online to schedule appointments, preregister, pay bills, review information from their charts, and receive educational materials—all activities that otherwise would be done over the phone or in person …

How to create an account in our patient portal?

Feb 07, 2018 · For the patient portal implementation to be most beneficial, the practice will offer patient education sessions to help patients register and to familiarize them with the portal’s features. In addition, a computer will be placed in the waiting area so staff can help patients register with the portal on the spot.

What elements should be incorporated into a patient portal?

A robust patient portal should include the following features:Clinical summaries.Secure (HIPAA-compliant) messaging.Online bill pay.New patient registration.Ability to update demographic information.Prescription renewals and contact lens ordering.Appointment requests.Appointment reminders.More items...

What is example of patient portal?

For example, Intuit Health and Microsoft HealthVault describe themselves as personal health records (PHRs), but they can interface with EMRs and communicate through the Continuity of Care Record standard, displaying patient data on the Internet so it can be viewed through a patient portal.

What are the benefits and challenges of implementing a patient portal?

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.Feb 17, 2016

What makes a great patient portal Top benefits features and implementation tips?

Patient portals help encourage better physician-patient relationships and give patients more control over their treatment. They're able to check lab results, request prescription refills, update insurance information, manage any unpaid balances and more.Feb 12, 2021

What do patients want from a patient portal?

May 13, 2016 - Patient portals are an online website that is connected to the EHR, centrally focused on patient access to health data. These tools give patients a look into various data points, including lab results, physician notes, their health histories, discharge summaries, and immunizations.May 13, 2016

What are the five main features of the new healthcare portal?

5 Key Features Every Patient Portal Needs to OfferExcellent user experience. ... Branding flexibility. ... Flexible financing options. ... Loyalty rewards and incentives. ... Integration with existing systems.May 12, 2020

What is importance of patient portal?

A patient portal is a website for your personal health care. The online tool helps you to keep track of your health care provider visits, test results, billing, prescriptions, and so on. You can also e-mail your provider questions through the portal.Aug 13, 2020

What is the goal of hie?

Electronic health information exchange (HIE) allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists, other health care providers and patients to appropriately access and securely share a patient's vital medical information electronically—improving the speed, quality, safety and cost of patient care.Jul 24, 2020

How do patients feel about patient portals?

Some patients recognize the role of patient portals in their health care, reporting satisfaction with the ability to communicate with their health care teams and perform tasks such as requesting prescription refills conveniently [3,16].

What do patient portals offer?

A patient portal is a secure online website that gives patients convenient, 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an Internet connection. Using a secure username and password, patients can view health information such as: Recent doctor visits.Sep 29, 2017

Why do some patients fail to participate in the use of the patient portal?

The reason why most patients do not want to use their patient portal is because they see no value in it, they are just not interested. The portals do not properly incentivize the patient either intellectually (providing enough data to prove useful) or financially.

What is a patient portal quizlet?

Patient Portal. Web-based service that provides patients online access to their health information and allows them to communicate with their healthcare provider, schedule appointments, view billing statements, and accomplish more health-related tasks. Meaningful Use.

How beneficial is a new patient portal?

Your new patient portal will only be beneficial if your practice staff and patients know how to use it. Select a partner that provides consulting and onboarding to ensure you are successful with your new patient portal. This way, you can ensure you’re making the most of the new solution and taking full advantage of all the features it has to offer. Onboarding plans typically include details on training, workflow changes needed, new policies, and roles and responsibilities.

How should leading patient portals differentiate themselves?

Leading patient portals should differentiate themselves by providing proficiencies to your practice workflows. Evaluating workflows and enabling new benefits like patient self-scheduling, or pre-visit form completions can deliver significant workflow enhancements.

Why do we need a patient portal?

Why implement a patient portal? For practices with a website, a portal could be the next logical step. It can improve practice efficiency by allowing patients to go online to schedule appointments, preregister, pay bills, review information from their charts, and receive educational materials—all activities that otherwise would be done over the phone or in person during the office visit. And for practices that are moving on to Stage 2 of the federal meaningful use (MU) program for electronic health records (EHRs), a patient portal provides a means for satisfying the “patient electronic access” objective (see “ Portals and EHR Meaningful Use ”).

What is Stage 2 MU?

With 2014 just around the corner, practices that are moving on to Stage 2 of the federal meaningful use (MU) incentive program must prepare to meet the new re-quirements. Part of this preparation should include implementing a patient portal as a means for satisfying core objective 7, which gives patients electronic access to their health information. For instance, measure 2 of this objective requires that more than 5 percent of patients view their health information online, download it, or transmit it to a third party.

How to get the most value from an EHR?

To get the most value from an EHR, practices will need to invest time in training and preparation. Some customization of the system will likely be needed based on how the practice functions and the individual work styles of the various providers.

What are the limitations of EHR?

The limitations of the EHR and the patient portal have presented challenges, such as the inability to send clinical summaries to patients via the portal. The practice can only move ahead with certain aspects of patient and family engagement as quickly as the system is upgraded.

When did Dover Family Physicians adopt EHR?

Dover Family Physicians adopted an electronic health record (EHR) system in 2008 with a goal of improving the quality of patient care and especially strengthening preventive care services. The practice has focused on ways to use the EHR to engage patients and their family members in their health and healthcare through a patient portal implementation. The practice, located in Dover, Delaware, has four physicians and two physician assistants, and provides primary care to more than 800 patients weekly.

How long does it take for a nurse to respond to a patient?

The practice established standards for response times of within 4 hours for more urgent questions to 2 days for prescription refills

Is electronic communication second nature?

For many patients, the use of Web-based information and electronic communication is “second nature”; consequently, they are comfortable using the portal. As one clinician observed, “Lots of patients are accustomed to using electronic communication now. They don’t want to have to pick up the phone anymore.”.

What are the steps that providers should take to improve patient engagement?

Some key actions that providers should take to improve patient engagement is to implement proactive and engaging features as well as promote and expedite portal use.

What are the key issues that concern providers?

One of the key issues that concerns providers is the difficulty of increasing patient engagement and the use of patient portals. Having patients be more aware and have more control over their own health is necessary to ensure better patient outcomes and quality of care.