teach patient portal use

Teaching patients portal usage improves satisfaction, engagement 30 Oct 2018 | SOURCE: Healthcare Dive Dive Brief: Teaching patients how to access a patient portal and its role in their post-discharge care increases engagement during and after hospitalization. It also improves patient experience, a new JAMIA study finds.

Full Answer

How can we encourage patients to enroll and use patient portals?

Jan 15, 2019 · For example, incentive programs could encourage providers to spend more time with their patients educating them about how to use the patient portal. Patient education should also touch on the importance of portal engagement and the security provisions in place to keep patient data safe. Ideally, driving better patient education about the portal will help patients …

What can you do with a health portal?

May 31, 2019 · Make patient portal communication the norm. Move away from traditional methods of patient communication, like phone and mail. Frame the patient portal as the best way to reach clinicians and see important medical information. Chapter 1 Recap Take the first step toward patient engagement by facilitating easy portal enrollment.

Do patients and caregivers use portals to communicate with healthcare staff?

Nov 13, 2018 · How to Optimize Patient Portals for Patient Engagement and Meet Meaningful Use Requirements. Just making a portal available to patients will not ensure that they will use it. The portal must be engaging and user-friendly, and must support patient-centered outcomes. The portal also must be integrated into clinical encounters so the care team uses it to convey …

What are the components of patient portal training?

Patient portals must be user friendly to sustain continued patient use. If your practice’s portal is not intuitive or if it is too cumbersome to move through the options, you’ll find your patients will avoid using it. “Our portal is provided by one of several third-party vendors that work directly with our EHR vendor,” said Ms. Woodke.

How do you use patient portal?

How do you encourage patient portal?

What are the benefits of a patient portal?

Why is patient portal important in healthcare?

What is meaningful use?

What are the benefits and challenges of using patient portals?

Are patient portals easy to use?

Why do patients not use patient portals?

How do patient portals improve patient outcomes?

What is the goal of hie?

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 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.

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.

What can a patient use a portal for?

For example, encourage patients to use the portal to make follow-up appointments, stay on top of recommended screenings, or request refills. Some portals even enable clinicians to create task lists for patients that include activities related to taking medications, eating a healthy diet, and staying physically active.

Why do we need to encourage staff to set up their own patient portal accounts?

Encourage staff to set up their own patient portal accounts, so that they can better understand the tool and its potential value to patients

Why are patients not enrolling in EHR?

Patients report not enrolling because they: Don’t remember discussing it with their clinicians. Lack information or motivation — for example, they don’t have signup instructions or they feel too busy.

How to facilitate enrollment?

To facilitate enrollment, automatically enroll your patients in a portal account, instead of waiting for patients to sign up themselves. Keep enrollment numbers up by encouraging new patients to stay registered and offering tips for patients with limited computer access or skills.

How does the amount of time and effort it takes to register for a patient portal affect?

The amount of time and effort it takes to register for a patient portal can affect whether your patients successfully enroll or give up halfway through.

What is Mana Health?

Mana Health, a health IT developer, enables patients to sign up in a few simple steps. When a patient registers, Mana’s system uses data (like demographics and the patient’s medical record number) to match up the patient with her EHR. This automated verification system means an efficient, successful enrollment process for practices and patients.

What to do in the waiting room for EHR?

In the waiting room, have posters, brochures, and videos that highlight portal features. Ask your EHR vendor what materials they offer — many have developed portal marketing materials so that you don’t have to

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.”

What is 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.

Why do providers use patient portals?

This is mainly because providers are trying to build a relationship with their patients, not just bolster patient loyalty. For many providers, patient portal use is about building trust and enhancing care.

Why do we need portals?

Further, portals help providers educate their patients and prepare them for future care encounters. When patients have access to their health data, they are better informed, and have the potential to generate deep and meaningful conversations regarding patient wellness during doctor’s appointments.

Why do portals like secure messaging make patients want to return to a certain provider?

Because portal features like secure messaging facilitate strong bonds between patients and providers, these tools make patients want to return to a certain provider.

Why are patient portals important?

Research shows that when patients are able to see their own health data, they gain ownership of their own wellness and are better prepared to interact with their providers about their care.

Why do providers need to understand patient populations?

Providers must understand which patient populations are and are not likely to utilize the patient portal. By identifying populations with lower adoption rates, providers can target their engagement strategies to encourage portal adoption, helping them to deliver better care to their patients in the long-run.

Why do minority patients have lower portal adoption rates?

Research shows that minority ethnicities have lower rates of patient portal adoption, potentially due to lack of access to technology or lack of technology literacy.

Why are patient portals important?

While the evidence is currently immature, patient portals have demonstrated benefit by enabling the discovery of medical errors, improving adherence to medications, and providing patient-provider communication, etc. High-quality studies are needed to fully understand, improve, and evaluate their impact.

How does a patient portal improve patient engagement?

Patient portals may enhance patient engagement by enabling patients to access their electronic medical records (EMRs) and facilitating secure patient-provider communication.

What are the inputs and outputs of a patient portal?

The inputs are the material (eg, hardware and software) and nonmaterial (eg, leadership) components that facilitate or impair the establishment or use of the portal. Processes include the interactions of the users with the portal. Outputs comprise the results of the implementation or the use of the portal. Through the analysis, we identified 14 themes within these three categories, shown in Textbox 1.

How does patient involvement improve quality of care?

Promoting patient involvement in health care delivery may lead to improved quality and safety of care [14,15] by enabling patients to spot and report errors in EMRs, for example [6]. 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]. Portal use may reduce in-person visits, visits to emergency departments, and patient-provider telephone conversations [3,8-10,12,16]. Despite the potential of portals, already used in the ambulatory setting for some time, implementation in the inpatient setting has only recently gathered momentum [17-19]. The inpatient setting presents additional challenges for implementing patient portals [18,20]. Clinical conditions leading to hospitalization are often acute and the amount of medical information generated during this time can be extensive, which may overwhelm patients [20] and challenge information technology to rapidly display this information.

What are barriers in portals?

Barriers: factors that hinder widespread adoption or portal use

What is portal design?

Portal design: umbrella term for all design-related aspects of the portal including portal interface, content, features, and functions

What databases are used to search for articles published between 2005 and 2017?

The PubMed, CINAHL, and Embase databases were searched for articles published between 2005 and 2017 using keywords related to patient engagement, electronic health records, patient portals, and their associated subject headings in each database: the full search terms for each database are provided in Multimedia Appendix 1.

Dive Brief

Teaching patients how to access a patient portal and its role in their post-discharge care increases engagement during and after hospitalization. It also improves patient experience, a new JAMIA study finds.

Dive Insight

As MACRA and the Quality Payment Program place more emphasis on patient access to information, patient portals provide an effective means of engaging patients and improving outcomes.

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Topics covered: M&A, health IT, care delivery, healthcare policy & regulation, health insurance, operations and more.