patient portal functionality

by Dr. Callie Marquardt II 5 min read

7 Core Patient Portal Features You Should Look For

8 hours ago  · 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 Discharge summaries Medications Immunizations Allergies Lab results Some patient portals … >> Go To The Portal


Some patient portals also allow you to:

  • Securely message your doctor
  • Request prescription refills
  • Schedule non-urgent appointments
  • Check benefits and coverage
  • Update contact information
  • Make payments
  • Download and complete forms
  • View educational materials

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

How to access your patient portal?

When you register on the TOL Patient Portal, you can:

  • Review and download personal health information
  • Schedule, change, view, or cancel appointments at your military hospital or clinic
  • Receive secure email and text message appointment reminders
  • Refill and check status of your prescriptions at your military hospital or clinic
  • Get information and services when separating from active duty or reserves

More items...

How do you set up a patient portal?

With My Seton Health, you have access to:

  • A Summary of treatment during your hospital stay
  • A list of active medications
  • Your hospital discharge instructions
  • Lab and vital sign results

How to create your patient portal?

email and create an account on Sadio, the patient portal. Once the link has been opened, the email address will be verified. 2) The system will prompt you to create a username, password, and enter your date of birth.

How do I access my Patient Portal?

You Choose the When and the Where

  • Use the Portal from anywhere using a browser
  • Access from your smartphone or tablet
  • Manage information 24X7, without waiting

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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 the advantage of a patient portal for the patient?

The Benefits of a Patient Portal You can access all of your personal health information from all of your providers in one place. If you have a team of providers, or see specialists regularly, they can all post results and reminders in a portal. Providers can see what other treatments and advice you are getting.Aug 13, 2020

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.Feb 17, 2016

What types of patient portals are there?

There are two main types of patient portals: a standalone system and an integrated service. Integrated patient portal software functionality usually comes as a part of an EMR system, an EHR system or practice management software. But at their most basic, they're simply web-based tools.Feb 12, 2021

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

Do patient portals improve outcomes?

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 risks of a patient portal?

Some of these risks include: reliance on the patient portal as a sole method of patient communication; patient transmission of urgent/emergent messages via the portal; the posting of critical diagnostic results prior to provider discussions with patients; and possible security breaches resulting in HIPAA violations.Mar 1, 2021

What are the cons of patient portals?

Even though they should improve communication, there are also disadvantages to patient portals....Table of ContentsGetting Patients to Opt-In.Security Concerns.User Confusion.Alienation and Health Disparities.Extra Work for the Provider.Conclusion.Nov 11, 2021

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 are the best patient portals?

Top patient portal vendors include Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, and Epic.Cerner Corporation. ... READ MORE: Patient Portal Use Lagging Despite Strong Provider Support.CPSI. ... Epic Systems. ... InteliChart. ... MEDHOST. ... MEDITECH. ... RelayHealth.More items...•Apr 28, 2017

How do you make a patient portal?

4 Steps to Successful Patient Portal Adoption, IntegrationOutline clinic or hospital needs, goals.Select a patient portal vendor.Create provider buy-in.Market the patient portal to end-users.Jun 6, 2017

How do you implement a patient portal?

7 Steps to Implement a New Patient Portal SolutionResearch different solutions. ... Look for the right features. ... Get buy-in from key stakeholders. ... Evaluate and enhance existing workflows. ... Develop an onboarding plan. ... Successful go-live. ... Seek out painless portal migration.Jul 2, 2020

Overview

Patient portals improve the way in which patients and health care providers interact. A product of meaningful use requirements, they were mandated as a way to provide patients with timely access to their health care. Specifically, patient portals give patients access to their health information to take a more active role.

Primary Benefits

No matter the type of platform you choose, your patient portal can provide your patients with secure online access to their medical details and increase their engagement with your practice. And not to mention that it does so while providing several benefits for health care providers as well. Some of these benefits include:

Notable Challenges

While many people have used a patient portal by now, they have mixed reviews at best. As you can see in the section above, there are plenty of benefits that patient portals provide. But unfortunately, their potential has yet to be fully harnessed.

Emerging Trends

If patient portals are a mixed bag, why should the patient portal receive greater consideration in the EHR, EMR and practice management selection processes? Because when you look at current industry trends, patient portals are well on their way to improving. Some of these trends include:

How to Use a Patient Portal

With patient portals, the first and foremost thing you will need is a computer and a working internet connection. Create a customized user’s account in the software to avail medical services on your own. Once you enter the patient portal, click on links and products sold by the provider and tap into a new experience.

Solution Evaluation

Now that you know what a patient portal is and given the potential and growing importance, how should you evaluate the best portal for your practice or facility? You can select a standalone patient portal that a third-party vendor commonly hosts through the cloud as a health care provider.

Final Thoughts

It’s clear that using a patient portal software can provide several benefits for your medical practice. After accounting for these nine considerations, you should be ready to start using a patient portal. The only decision left to make is which platform you’ll use.

Why are patient portals important?

One of the top benefits of patient portal usage is dramatic increase of patient engagement due to opening various possibilities of involvement for patients in their healthcare upon patient portal activation and utilization.

Why is it important to refrain from using patient portal?

It is important to note that patients refraining from applying patient portal option admit privacy concerns as a reason. It means that, provided they could feel reassured of the mentioned concerns , they would be willing to apply patient portal access more often.

Why is patient engagement important in healthcare?

According to the World Health Organization Report, patient engagement became an integral component of healthcare as patients once involved in the process are more capable of taking informed decisions in favor of healthcare awareness.

What is online appointment scheduling?

Online Appointment Scheduling is one of the most important features on patient portal as it enables patients, regardless of their actual location, to make an appointment on a certain date or on those time slots that suit patients best.

Why are portals beneficial?

Portals are beneficial in terms of managing the process of patient registration with ease. Patient portals enable easy-to-perform sign in to get access to the records or complete patient forms for having a test, getting insights with health history data, tapping in immunization records, or lists of prescribed medication lists.

What is a prescription refill?

Prescription Refills. The ongoing treatment, repeated medical procedures often require that the patient has access to Prescription Refills. By facilitating this process, healthcare professionals can expect improvement of patient engagement.

What is patient portal?

Background: Patient portal use could help improve the care and health outcomes of patients with diabetes owing to functionalities, such as appointment booking, electronic messaging (e-messaging), and repeat prescription ordering, which enable patient-centered care and improve patient self-management of the disease.

Do patient portals have limitations?

However, limitations of studying the effects of patient portals exist, which do not guarantee whether the outcomes reported are completely the result of patient portal use or if confounding factors exist. Randomized controlled trials and mixed-methods studies could help understand the mechanisms involved in health outcome improvements ...

Know Your Options

Evaluate your options and create a long-term strategy. By assessing the full range of portal components, you can then determine which capabilities will best suit your practice.

Registering

Save the patient time in the office. When registration is completed prior to an appointment, patients spend less time in the waiting room and more time engaged in their care.

Secure Messaging

When your patient portal is integrated with your EHR system, secure messaging provides an efficient way to exchange information with both patients and other providers.

Providing Educational Materials

Diagnoses and treatment plans can be difficult for patients to understand and remember. In order to reinforce this information, practices have been giving patients supplemental printed materials for years. And now, with a portal, patients can access these materials online.

Ask for Patient Feedback

It is important to communicate with your patients and ask for feedback about your practice’s performance and services—including your patient portal. In order to get tips from them for making the portal more useful, Ms.

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.

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.

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Overview

Primary Benefits

  • No matter the type of platform you choose, your patient portal can provide your patients with secure online access to their medical details and increase their engagement with your practice. And not to mention that it does so while providing several benefits for health care providers as well. Some of these benefits include:
See more on selecthub.com

Notable Challenges

  • While many people have used a patient portal by now, they have mixed reviews at best. As you can see in the section above, there are plenty of benefits that patient portals provide. But unfortunately, their potential has yet to be fully harnessed. Some patient portals are hard to access, poorly designed, cumbersome to navigate and limited in utility. These downfalls make it …
See more on selecthub.com

Emerging Trends

  • If patient portals are a mixed bag, why should the patient portal receive greater consideration in the EHR, EMR and practice management selection processes? Because when you look at current health care technology trends, patient portals are well on their way to improving. Some of these trends include:
See more on selecthub.com

How to Use A Patient Portal

  • With patient portals, the first and foremost thing you will need is a computer and a working internet connection. Create a customized user’s account in the software to avail medical services on your own. Once you enter the patient portal, click on links and products sold by the provider and tap into a new experience. Set up the portal according to your needs and receive messages, …
See more on selecthub.com

Solution Evaluation

  • Now that you know what a patient portal is and given the potential and growing importance, how should you evaluate the best portal for your practice or facility? You can select a standalone patient portal that a third-party vendor commonly hosts through the cloud as a health care provider. This approach can result in incompatibility issues with your EMR and/or EHR system, r…
See more on selecthub.com

Final Thoughts

  • It’s clear that using patient portal software can provide several benefits for your medical practice. After accounting for these considerations, you should be ready to start using a patient portal. The only decision left to make is which platform you’ll use. Consider taking a look at our Top Medical Software Comparison or build your own requirements checklistto give yourself an idea of what t…
See more on selecthub.com