how to increase 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 not enrolled in your patient ...
• 2. Get the whole office involved.
• 3. Use every patient handout or marketing collateral as an opportunity to promote the patient portal.
• 4. Market the benefits, not the features.
• 5. Older patients may surprise you.

Full Answer

How to implement a patient portal in your practice?

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.

Do patient portal interventions improve outcomes?

Effects of patient portal interventions on clinical outcomes including blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, and weight loss were mixed. Conclusions Patient portal interventions were overall effective in improving a few psychological outcomes, medication adherence, and preventive service use.

Do geniuses increase patient interest in portal enrollment and provider involvement?

This could suggest that the presence and active service of Geniuses not only engages patient interest in portal enrollment, but also enhances provider involvement. The survey data demonstrated that adolescents have an active interest in using patient portals.

What does the future hold for patient portal research?

In addition, Future research needs to expand the nature and scope of the modalities in patient portal interventions beyond simple digital text messaging by using a more interactive way of engaging patients, such as using voice and video modalities. Limitations A number of limitations of this review should be noted.

How do you promote patient portals?

Seven tips on how to promote your patient portal Add a tag line to appointment cards, statements, newsletters, and other communication. An example: “Tired of playing phone tag? Sign up for the patient portal.” Change your practice's on-hold messaging to include information introducing the patient portal.

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.

How are patient portals useful?

Patient portals provide the ability for patients to have 24-hour access to connect with their provider by reviewing patient health information (PHI), asking and answering questions, and reviewing notes, making the patient-physician relationship closer than ever.

Why do patient portals fail?

Conversely, most portals greet patients with inadequate functionality, confusing formatting, and hard to understand health data. Patients often lose interest in these portals, unsure of how to take advantage of any of their promised offerings.

How can we improve patient registration process?

Here are some steps you can take to assess and improve your workflow.Assess your practice's waiting room. ... Review your existing digital capabilities. ... Reflect on your patient registration workflow. ... Identify hang-ups in the patient registration process. ... Train staff on patient registration best practices.More items...•

How do patient portals improve patient outcomes?

Most of the portal interventions used tailored alerts or educational resources tailored to the patient's condition. Patient portal interventions lead to improvements in a wide range of psychobehavioral outcomes, such as health knowledge, self-efficacy, decision making, medication adherence, and preventive service use.

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.

What are the challenges of patient portals?

Patient portals are secure websites that give people access to their personal health information from anywhere, at any time....Table of ContentsGetting Patients to Opt-In.Security Concerns.User Confusion.Alienation and Health Disparities.Extra Work for the Provider.Conclusion.

What are the top barriers to patient portal adoption use?

Burying lab results or not offering access to clinician notes will likely keep patients from seeing the utility of the portal. Even if providers offer this health data, making it difficult for patients to navigate to it will reduce the utility in the technology.

What is a reason for providers to be reluctant to use a 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.

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 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 ...

Is the Patient Portal online?

The portal is online and so are most of your patients, presumably. Draft a “Welcome to our Patient Portal” email and send it to each patient in your list. At this point, it’s worth mentioning that you should be collecting email addresses already as a normal part of patient encounters.

Do patients get emails from social media?

Your patients may not be getting emails from you or seeing social media posts, but they will notice when you post signs about the portal in your reception and waiting areas as well as in the examination rooms.

How to promote patient portal?

Look at every patient interaction as an opportunity to promote the patient portal. If a patient calls in to schedule an appointment, have the receptionist explain that next time they can schedule an appointment online, and even receive appointment reminders by email. When patients are checking out, make sure staff say they’ll be able to pay their bills online. And, before you leave the exam room, remind them that they’ll be able to access any lab results and a clinical summary (or other materials, relevant to your practice) through the portal.

Why do patients use patient portals?

It makes sense — patients are more likely to use a patient portal if it’s filled with useful tools and valuable information that’s specific to their conditions and needs. Instead of searching the web for information of questionable quality, they’ll know any information in the portal is coming straight from their doctor.

How to get patients to sign up for a patient portal?

Having trouble getting users to sign-up? Try a bulk enrollment method. Pull the email addresses for any patients who haven’t enrolled in your patient portal and then upload them into the system (you'll need to verify your patient portal has a bulk upload feature). Then send a series of emails to the patients encouraging them to pick a username and password. Some patient portals may also allow you to assign usernames and temporary passwords for your patients to automatically enroll them. Then, send a series of emails welcoming patients to the portal and showing them how to access it. If you use this tactic, remember that some emails are likely to end up in patients’ spam folders.

Why is patient portal important?

Patient portals can be great tools for engaging your patients, and can even help save you time when patients use secure messaging. Still, getting your practice’s patient portal set-up and actually getting patients to use it are two entirely different challenges.

Do elderly patients need help?

While elderly patients may need a little more help navigating the patient portal, they’re also your most motivated and engaged users.

Is patient portal a project?

Adopting a patient portal is a huge project, and it’s likely to need some tweaking and updating after your first launch. If you add a new feature (like, say appointment scheduling) or update the layout to make it more user-friendly, make sure you advertise these changes to your patients. A patient who initially logged on and was frustrated by bugs or a difficult layout might be encouraged by news of an updated design.

Can you have a patient portal?

Yes! Even if you’ve had patient portals on your mind for what seems like forever, it takes time for your patients to adjust and start using a new system. Plus, some of your more infrequent patients may not have been into the office since the launch. Be patient, and keep up all your promotion efforts until you’re satisfied with the numbers.

Patient Portals: Background

Patient portals are enabled by electronic health records (EHRs) and were given a boost in the early days by meaningful use (MU) requirements that helped healthcare providers qualify for EHR incentive programs.

Patient Portals: Benefits

Research indicates that patient portals offer a variety of benefits, including the ability to spot medical errors in a patient’s record, improve medication adherence, and enhance patient-provider communications.

Patient Portals: Factors Influencing Adoption

Some of the research related to patient portal adoption also underscores the importance of portal design. For instance, one study, “Patient Portals Facilitating Engagement With Inpatient Electronic Medical Records: A Systematic Review” noted that “Many articles showed that good portal design is crucial for usability and adoption by patients.”

Patient Portals: Tips to Increase Adoption

As evidenced in some of the research included here, there are certain things you can do to help increase patient portal adoption rates. Here are five tips for your breast center to consider:

How to Improve Patient Portal Engagement

The more patients understand the value of a patient engagement solution, the more likely they will embrace it. If they receive instructions—simple and straightforward—they’ll see the benefits. Equal to patient education is getting providers and staff familiar with the benefits and share them with their patients.

Answer their questions

Being prepared to answer patients’ questions is the beginning of a successful patient portal marketing campaign. Share these answers to basic questions with your patients via email, text, or website.

Educate and Encourage

Education and encouragement will increase enrollment in your patient portal. Ease of use and English and Spanish language options will also attract patients. To maintain the urgency to enroll, set up a game, contest, or drawing with prizes to encourage patients to use the portal.

Summary

Giving patients the tools to manage their care frees staff time and helps reduce administrative tasks. Most of all, you can continue to nurture the component that keeps your practice going forward—the relationship between providers and patients.

What are the benefits of patient portal?

Reaction to the patient portal implementation has been very positive. Patients appreciate the convenience, for example, of being able to contact the practice at any time of day or night . 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.” Clinicians and staff members appreciate that the portal reduces call volume and “provides a fluid line of communication that works well.” They noted that communication via the portal helped to reduce miscommunication and delays that sometimes occur with phone communication.

Why are patients interested in portals?

Patients may be especially interested in the portal at particular moments, such as when they are frustrated with telephone wait times or playing “telephone tag.” Staff members take these opportunities to encourage patients to use the portal.

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.

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.

Do patients need to be educated about clinical summaries?

The providers noted that patients need to be educated about clinical summaries, otherwise “many clinical summaries are likely to end up in the trash.” Consequently, providers explain the contents, purpose, and benefits of the clinical summary to patients.