project plan for patient portal implementation

What do you need to know about patient portal implementation?

According to an MGMA survey, 90 percent of providers offer a patient portal solution, and the remaining 10 percent are working on implementing one—but doing so can certainly prove challenging without the right plan in place for implementation. Implementing a new system is a complex process, not only for technical reasons but also because of ...

How can we improve patient engagement through online patient portal training?

 · Patients First leadership views the patient portal as an important way to support “patients as partners.”. The NextMD patient portal was rolled out in August 2010 and serves three core functions: Providing patients with an electronic clinical summary, Providing timely access to lab results, and. Providing secure messaging with clinical and ...

How do patients Register on the patient portal?

Results. Partners HealthCare System (Boston, MA), a multi-hospital health care network comprising several thousand physicians caring for over 1 million individual patients, has developed a comprehensive patient web-portal called Patient Gateway that allows patients to interact directly with their EHR via secure Internet access. Using this portal, a specific diabetes …

What are the benefits of portals for healthcare providers?

Likewise, when we receive a payment by mail, someone has to open the envelope, scan the check into the banking system, prepare and make the deposit, and post it into the system. Each of these steps costs us money. If a patient makes a payment through the portal, our cost is about 1 cent.”. Making these advantages meaningful to your employees ...

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.

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

Five key features to look for in an EHR patient portalEasy to follow user interface. ... Messaging and communication. ... Registration. ... Scheduling. ... Enhanced security.

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 the nurse's role in implementation of patient portals in healthcare?

Nurses encourage patients to enroll in the portals, wear buttons to welcome questions from patients and their families, explain the portal's privacy and security features, and demonstrate how to look up test results, send and receive provider messages, and request prescription refills.

What are the different types of patient portals?

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.

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.

What is a patient portal link?

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.

When did the medical field start using patient portals?

Early Implementation And Growth Of Patient Portals In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the earliest adopters of patient portals began offering electronic tools for patient-centered communication, often “tethered” to their integrated electronic health record system.

What is the National Learning Consortium?

The National Learning Consortium (NLC) is a virtual and evolving body of knowledge and resources designed to support healthcare providers and health IT professionals working towards the implementation, adoption and meaningful use of certified EHR systems.

How do patient portals improve nursing practice?

Engaging patients in the delivery of health care has the potential to improve health outcomes and patient satisfaction. Patient portals may enhance patient engagement by enabling patients to access their electronic medical records (EMRs) and facilitating secure patient-provider communication.

Is a patient portal an EHR?

PHRs, EHRs and patient portals But EHRs contain more extensive information because they're used by health care providers to store visit notes, test results and much more. A PHR that is tied to an EHR is called a patient portal.

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.

What is a patient first template?

Patients First created templates for specific visit types that include links to relevant patient education materials. The template for Medicare wellness visits, for example, includes educational materials about carbon monoxide poisoning smoking cessation, secondhand smoke, seat belts, firearm safety, radon testing, and smoke detectors.

When was the NextMD portal rolled out?

Patients First leadership views the patient portal as an important way to support “patients as partners.” The NextMD patient portal was rolled out in August 2010 and serves three core functions:

Why is flexibility important in clinical practice?

Allowing Flexibility Encourages Adoption. Providers have given input into the development of templates for different clinical situations and they are able to tailor the clinical summary according to their own preferences.

Why do providers need to adjust to completing their notes at the time of service?

Providers need to adjust to completing their notes at the time of service and writing their notes in plain language because they will be read by patients, rather than relayed to patients by medical personnel. Also, providers and patients need to adjust to secure messaging as a new mode of communication.

Why is clinical summary important?

The physician expressed that “the clinical summary is a huge, huge asset to the patient and the family” because it allows information to be shared accurately and efficiently. Providers feel that the clinical summary fosters patient engagement in health care, and helps patients understand what the provider is planning.

When did Patients First update their EHR?

Patients First has implemented several upgrades to the EHR system, including a major database upgrade to NextGen version 5.6 (certified version) in February 2011.

What was central to the successful adoption effort?

Leadership by example was central to the successful adoption effort.

What is a patient portal?

A patient web-portal that can draw the patient's clinical data directly from the ambulatory EHR and, in turn, link the patient back to his or her primary care physician (PCP) via the EHR represents a novel mechanism for engaging patients in their care and augmenting traditional visit-based medicine.20Such a system also has the potential to overcome many of the current barriers to effective diabetes care. Partners HealthCare System, a large integrated health delivery system in Boston, MA, comprising several thousand physicians caring for over 1 million individual patients, has developed a comprehensive patient web-portal called Patient Gatewaythat allows patients to interact in a limited manner with their electronic medical record via secure Internet access.21,22Patient Gatewayis currently available to over 150,000 patients in 14 primary care clinics within our system. In this report, we describe the conceptual framework, design, implementation, and evaluation plan for a Diabetes Module to be integrated into Patient Gateway.

What are the goals of the patient interface?

Two key goals of the design for the patient interface were (1) to organize the clinical data in an educational format and (2) to enable patients to author a detailed, tailored Diabetes Care Plan to share with their PCP.

What is EHR snapshot?

When a patient accesses his or her Diabetes Module, an “EHR snapshot” of relevant clinical data is copied into the module, which ignores any subsequent changes in EHR data while it is being edited by the patient. The patient may determine if EHR data have changed since they were copied into the diabetes module, and may elect to “refresh” the module with a current EHR data snapshot if desired. This assures that a clinician can update clinical data in the EHR regardless of patient portal activity.

How do PCPs know if a patient has a diabetes care plan?

PCPs are made aware when a patient transmits a completed Diabetes Care Plan by the presence of an alerting icon in the EHR. PCPs can then open the Diabetes Care plan—which is reformatted as a concise list of specific management decisions and patient concerns (Fig. 4)—to review the contents, add physician comments, and save as a “Letter” in the EHR. PCPs also have the option of importing the concise Diabetes Care Plan directly into a physician progress note, thereby facilitating documentation.

What are the six behavioral referral areas in the Diabetes Patient Portal?

Screen shot of the Diabetes Patient Portal shows the six behavioral/referral-related areas (diet and exercise, smoking cessation, anti-platelet agent, and eye and foot exam referrals) and patient decision support related to eye care.

Why is medication management important in EHR?

Because medication management is key to risk factor control (and underlies the problem of clinical inertia), we created a “Medication Module” to allow patients to view their EHR medication list in order to make corrections, add new medicines, and report any medication-specific adherence barriers or side effects. We then created a diabetes-specific medication library that imported from the Medication Module to the Diabetes Module any medication (and associated patient comments) used to treat each of the three diabetes-related conditions. This organizational framework allowed us to specifically link medication names to their corresponding treatment targets and to provide patients with a tailored view of their own current care for a given condition (Fig. 1), thereby enabling tailored “patient-centered decision support” focused on medication management. Thus, for patients with elevated risk factor levels, the link with corresponding medications permits specific decision support regarding medication increase (or initiation).

What are the three core medically managed conditions?

The first major organizational division was to separate the three core diabetes-related medically managed conditions (glucose control, blood pressure control, and cholesterol control) from the six behavioral or referral-associated goals (diet and exercise, smoking cessation, anti-platelet agent, and eye and foot exam referrals) using a “tab” format (Fig. 1).

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 ”).

Can you focus on the patient?

You can focus on the patient, not on the registration process. “One of the most significant improvements we have experienced with the introduction of our patient portal has been the amount of time that we get to spend with a patient,” said Denise Fridl, COT, COE, who is her practice’s chief performance officer. “If patients have already submitted their registration information prior to their visit—rather than spending 10 minutes answering a technician’s questions—we can spend more quality time talking to them about why they are here for an appointment.”

Why are patient portals important?

Patient portals hold a lot of promise for improving relationships and interaction. They can also help your patients be better informed and more engaged in their care -- as long as everyone is equally willing to adopt the technology.

What does it mean to use an online portal?

Despite this desire, using an online portal means setting up yet another username and password and learning another online tool. They have to feel that it's worth it. To get your patients to use the portal, make sure you involve marketing and education in your implementation. Your patients need to know the tool exists, understand what it can do, and learn how to use it.

Can patients send messages directly to their provider?

Patients can send messages directly to their provider, reducing the chances of miscommunication.

Can patients keep track of their medical records?

Patients can more easily keep track of their medical information.

How can providers 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 . There are a variety of benefits providers gain from portals such as efficient and effective communication channels with patients, greater self-care initiative from patients, and higher patient satisfaction.

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.

Can older people access their health information through a portal?

Often, the older population may not be as tech-savvy with regard to accessing their health data through a patient portal. ONC suggests training these patients to use the tools and services available through a portal.

Is patient portal expanding?

Currently, patient portals are expanding not only nationwide but also across the globe. A press release from Frost & Sullivan emphasizes the high adoption rate of patient portals in Africa.

When to add a physician to ESI triage?

The first step is to add a physician to triage Monday through Friday between 4 p.m. and midnight (stretch will be extra hours and 7 days if possible). The subset of ESI 3 triaged patients will be referred directly to the physician in triage who will begin the evaluation of the patient and order appropriate tests.

What would happen if a project was started with feedback?

Once the project was started, feedback would be requested constantly and data reviewed. Protocol adjustments could be made based on this feedback process.

Can a physician see a patient in triage?

The physician in triage would only see a patient after the triage nurse assessed the patient and determined that the patient qualified for care under this new protocol. The physician would have the right to reassign the patient to the main ED if he or she felt that the severity of illness warranted it.