promoting patient portal

^{Seven tips on how to promote your patient portal}

• Provide informational handouts at the front desk and in the waiting area that patients can read while they wait for appointments.
• Place a computer kiosk or tablet in the waiting area that allows patients to register for the portal and then use it to complete necessary registration forms.
• Send postcards to patients, introducing your portal and encouraging them to use it to request their next appointment or medication refill.
• 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.
Display a link to the patient portal on your practice’s website and in the office.
Make the portal your practice’s preferred way of sending information to patients. To drive home the message, tell patients the portal it is the preferred method of communication.

Full Answer

How can patient portals boost patient engagement and patient satisfaction?

May 19, 2017 · How to promote your patient portal Examples of ways to incorporate these promotion tactics The benefits of promoting your patient portal BONUS: A customizable template that can be printed and handed out to patients Also of Interest How Patient Portal Promotion Can Increase... Using Meaningful Use as a Springboard to Success

How do patients sign up for a patient portal?

Promoting Engagement Through Patient Portal Adoption Authors ECG Management Consultants In today’s consumer-driven and regulation-heavy environment, there are financial, regulatory, and competitive imperatives for health organizations to promote patient engagement through user-friendly patient portal applications.

What is a portal and why do you need one?

Promote and Facilitate Portal Use The whole staff should be involved in promoting the patient portal. The front office can display signs or posters, staff can distribute information brochures, and providers can include standard talking points to introduce the portal during patient visits.

How do you build patient loyalty through the portal?

A major factor in the success of patient portals is how the portal is marketed or its marketing strategies. Individuals and organizations involved in promoting the use of patient portals avow that the best way to market a patient portal is to take advantage of different promotion methods at diverse touch points.

How do you promote a patient portal?

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 do I increase patient portal adoption?

How to Improve Patient Portal Adoption, Registration RatesConduct patient outreach, education.Considering hard-to-reach populations.Using the patient portal in public health efforts.Jan 27, 2021

What makes a great patient portal?

In order to help you evaluate common portal capabilities, we asked patients which portal features they would need the most: Scheduling appointments online. Viewing health information (e.g., lab results or clinical notes) Viewing bills/making payments.Jul 24, 2019

Why is patient portal important in healthcare?

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.Dec 8, 2017

Why is the patient portal a good tool for patient engagement?

Background. 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.

Can you hear me now a patient portal initiative program to increase patient engagement in an outpatient primary care setting?

The portal initiative program increased patient portal registration by 70% during the eight- week timeline. Using the PHE-5 scale as a metric, an increase in patient engagement of 60% was found, as three of the five scales showed an increase in engagement.Apr 21, 2021

What should be in a 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. Many providers now offer patient portals.Aug 13, 2020

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 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

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

Nurses see the portal as an additional service for patients, because it offers them the possibility for asking questions at any time and place suitable for the patient. Some nurses experience an increase in work load, because patients ask more non-urgent questions that otherwise would not be asked.Jun 15, 2012

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

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.

What is the challenge of stage 2?

While stage 2 has 20 core objectives, arguably the most challenging ones are: 1) 50% of your patients must be able to access their health information online in a timely manner, and 2) more than 5% of patients must actually engage providers’ patient portals. Not only do your patients need to be enrolled in your patient portal, ...

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 schedule an appointment online?

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.

Why are patient portals important?

As doctors, patients, and administrators utilize patient portals, a number of benefits of these portals to both patients and physicians have been realized. Top of the list of these benefits is the ability of patient portals to support preventive care. When physicians apply patient portals correctly, they are to make sure that their patients achieve a fuller and a better understanding of health. Research studies have come up with findings that prove that the use of patient portals as an interface of communication between patients and doctors has been a source of many improvements. The use of patient portals does not only improve self-management of active treatments, but also improves adherence to medication. What is more, patients using the portals show increased propensity and appreciation for preventive care. According to Tieu, patients who use well-developed portals exhibit a higher level of knowledge of their treatment as well as an improved rate of preventive care [1]. More importantly, the number of visits the doctor visits the patient is expected to make is reduced significantly. Therefore, it is clear that patient portals are important tools in the reduction of patient cares since the travel expenses are reduced or eliminated altogether. On the side of the physicians, patient portals get more time to handle other issues in preventive care.

What is EHR in healthcare?

Over the years, there has been a rapid increase in the utilization of electronic health records (EHRs) which are known to provide a number of opportunities in the enhancement of communications between patients and service providers. One of the important elements of the use of these records has been the use of patient portals that act as electronic points through which users can access EHRs. These portals are also referred to us tethered personal health records and have a great potential to enhance communication in a clinical setting.

How and why people adopt or embrace innovations?

How and why people adopt or embrace innovations has facilitated much research over the years . As research on these two aspects gained momentum, scholars developed different theories to describe factors surrounding adoption of innovations, including the barriers to adoption of different forms of technologies. Despite the existence of many theories and models such as concerns-based adoption model and technology acceptance model, this research was based on diffusion of innovations theory as the most appropriate theory. The suitability of this theory in the study in question is based on the fact that the theory recognizes that the adoption of an innovation such as the use of patient portals can be influenced by different factors. The theory identifies the four classifications of these factors in the form of the social system, innovation’s attributes, communication channels, and the adopter’s characteristics. For the purpose of this study, the most significant factors fall in the adopters’ characteristics, such as health literacy, computer skills, and level of training.

Where is Baptist Memorial Hospital located?

The study was carried out at Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation (BMHCC), which is located in Memphis, Tennessee. The medical facility has grown to a significant level since it began operating in 1912 and is now in a position to meet the needs of communities it serves. Its selection as the setting for this study was partially based on the fact that it is one of the largest privately owned hospitals in the nation and is involved in use of innovative technology for excellence in patient care, MyChart patient portal being one of these innovations.

Do you need a password for a patient portal?

A well developed patient portal must require the patients to use a password whenever the need to access the portal as well as when there is a long period of inactivity. To increase the security of a portal, a user account should be locked if a password is entered incorrectly for several times.

Why is role based access control important?

Previous studies have also recommended the use of role-based access control in handling the security and privacy issues experienced in the use of patient portals. This means that a regulation is put in place to grant information access to specific employees or users based on their role in the organization.

What is mHealth application?

On the other hand, mHealth applications are used to promote public and medical health practices by taking advantage of mobile devices. The mobile devices in common use in the support of mHealth applications include patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and mobile phones.

What can providers do?

Influence. Providers and care teams have one of the most important roles in promoting portal adoption. Facilities where providers inform and encourage patients to use the portal have a much higher engagement rate than those who do not.

Add value by activating features that meet patient needs

You can assess which portal features have the most value by going straight to the source: your patients. Ask them about the features they want or find useful, and tailor your portal to meet their needs.

Integrate patient-generated health data

Technology has changed how patients monitor their own health. One in five people use technology to track their health from fitness monitors to home medical devices. Using patient-generated health data has big advantages. Studies show it:

External marketing tips

Make the message to enroll and use the portal highly visible in your practice by:

The importance of internal buy-in

Internal buy-in is just as important as your external marketing strategies. Once your staff is sold on the benefits of the portal, they will enthusiastically encourage patients to sign up. Some tips to facilitate staff buy-in include:

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

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.

Nurses Can Increase The Use of A Valuable Healthcare Tool.

• Editor’s note: This is an early release of a web exclusive article for the January 2022 issue of American Nurse Journal. Takeaways: 1. Patient portals facilitate patient engagement in healthcare decisions, improve communication, and streamline care. 2. Less than one-third of patients access patient portals to view their medical data. 3. Nurses can improve patient portal …

See more on myamericannurse.com

Challenges

Nurses’ Role

The Future of Portals

Empower Patients