ways to improve 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...
2. Get the whole office involved. Your staff is key to a successful rollout and obtaining a high-level of patient...
3. Use every patient handout or marketing collateral as an opportunity to promote the...

Full Answer

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.

What is a patient portal?

A patient portal is a personalized, secure website that enables you to manage healthcare records, interactions and communicate with your healthcare providers at any time. This convenient online connection puts you in control of your healthcare from any web-enabled device. Why activate your patient portal account?

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.

Does patient engagement matter in portal interventions?

More important, patient engagement with the portal interventions was not evaluated at all in more than one-third of the studies included in the review [15,17,18,20,23,26,28,31] nor was it systematically incorporated in the design and analysis of the portal interventions.

How would you encourage patients to use patient portals?

How do you optimize patient portals for patient engagement?

Do patient portals improve healthcare?

What are the benefits and challenges of using patient portals?

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.

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 ...

Communication

Communication is how your practice makes your patients aware that you even have a portal. This becomes the responsibility of all the staff within your practice. Starting with the front office who will most likely come into contact with the patient first. Mentioning the portal should be within their standard script.

Education

Education is making sure the patient understands the purpose of the portal and how to use the portal. Education and information regarding your patient portal should be given to each patient during the first initial contact made between the patient and your practice.

Promotion

You have now communicated to your patients that your practice has a portal. You have educated your patients how to use the portal. The last step is to promote your portal. Sometimes the best way to get someone to do what you would like them to do is to offer incentives.

Do you need to set patient portal enrollment?

You need to set patient portal enrollment as a standard in your practice from their first appointment. Encourage them that it will make future processes, like prescription refills and appointment scheduling more convenient.

Can you schedule an appointment online?

Your patients may prefer to schedule their appointments online for convenience. Program your online appointment booking system to automatically enroll them in your patient portal. Make sure to highlight the benefits like appointment reminders (via text or email) and online payment options.

Is patient portal engagement good?

Patient portal engagement is a challenge, especially among low-income people, but optimizing for mobile will help level the playing field. Patient portals that are designed for smartphones will further improve patient use of the portal since over 81 percent of people in the United States now own a smartphone.

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.

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.

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.

What is patient portal?

Your patient portal can do a lot of things, but chances are that most of your patients do not care about all of the portal’s features. Instead of overwhelming patients with information, tell them about the features that they are most likely to use. This includes things that make it easier for patients to manage their health and to perform otherwise time-consuming tasks online – for example, features that give them the ability to:

Why is patient engagement important?

Patient engagement is a necessary element for the achievement of a better quality of care and it is a critical component of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) initiative to focus on the quality of care. CMS programs like the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, MACRA, are fundamentally changing the reimbursement matrix for healthcare in the United States by shifting the focus from fee for service to reimbursement for quality. Thus, determining the right patient engagement solution has become increasingly important for healthcare organizations.

How does a patient care coordinator help a patient?

If your healthcare organization uses patient care coordinators to promote health awareness and help patients reach their care goals , you know how integral these individuals are to successful patient engagement technology implementation. Care Coordinators work with the physician and patient to develop a care plan, they communicate the provider’s plan to the patient, and they continually assess the patient’s needs. They also play a vital role in adoption of patient engagement technology by by promoting patient portal features that open lines of communication and streamline care plan management.

What is the role of a physician in patient engagement?

A recent survey by the New England Journal of Medicine Insights Council, found that physician buy-in is essential to the adoption of patient engagement technology. Patients are much more likely to use a new technology if their physician wants them to use it. It is important to note that the physician’s role does not end after suggesting a new patient engagement technology, many patients will require reinforcement of the idea. For example, once patients are using a patient portal, their physician should mention the portal at each visit and specifically refer to a feature in which the patient might find value.