26 hours ago Dec 02, 2021 · Implementing a patient portal for your medical practice can increase efficiency in your office by making communication between you and your patients more manageable. Patient portals help save time when signing up new clients, allowing patients to fill out personal information electronically without answering the same questions repeatedly. >> Go To The Portal
The Patient Portal makes sure that there is efficient communication between the patients and the providers throughout their treatment process. Patients can access, view, and edit their information via an interactive patient portal.
Dec 02, 2021 · Implementing a patient portal for your medical practice can increase efficiency in your office by making communication between you and your patients more manageable. Patient portals help save time when signing up new clients, allowing patients to fill out personal information electronically without answering the same questions repeatedly.
Welcome to Gastro Health’s Patient Portal. View medical records, pay a bill, receive alerts about test results, and more. Login anytime, anywhere.
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.
Sep 19, 2017 · Patient portal benefits include patients’ ability to access their clinical summaries online. Providers can also send lab results to patients via secure messaging accompanied by a brief message explaining the results (for example, “Your results are normal”) and any needed follow‐up instructions (for example, “Come back in 3 months for a recheck”).
Just how are millennials defined? According to a report from Brookings and an infographic from Cardinal Health, millennials are those born between 1982-2000 and make up approximately 23 percent of the U.S. population. With 44 percent part of a minority or ethnic group, it makes them one of the most diverse generations.
It proves more difficult to attract new patients if they can’t find you in the digital sphere with a simple Google search. Key components of a strong and robust digital presence include:
This ties into having a strong online presence and the ability now for us to price compare and “shop around” with the aid of the Internet in the palm of our hands.
So you’ve expanded your online presence, you should now think about the physical location of your office. If you’re considering an expansion or changing office locations, understand the need and the demographics in the area. This will help you know how you may need to market your practice and the population of patients you will most often serve.
So your new millennial patient discovered your website when searching for IBD treatment options, read a few articles and decided to make an appointment with one of the gastroenterologists on staff.
With instant gratification and the interconnectedness that exists with texts, emails, online chats, social media and emails in the palm of your hand, patients may start expecting your accessibility to expand beyond standard office hours.
Change is inevitable, and it should be embraced if you want to put yourself and your practice on a successful road to meet the demands of the next generation of patients.
Patient portals allow you and your office staff to quickly deliver lab tests and confirm appointments without repeated phone calls. 2. Patient portals improve communication. Messaging through a patient portal makes communication easier for both patient and doctor. 3.
Some of the features available on patient portals may include: 1 Direct communication with the doctor via message 2 Short video appointments 3 Medical history and records 4 Prescription ordering 5 Appointment setting 6 Bill payment (premium and for medical services) 7 Educational materials, tailored to the patient 8 Lab and diagnostic test results 9 Visit summaries and notes from the doctor 10 A record of immunizations
Meaningful use standards provide minimal criteria for securing and delivering electronic health records. Although the term “meaningful use” is now outdated, the ideas behind the term are not. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the goal of meaningful use standards are as follows: 1 Improve quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce health disparities 2 Increase patient engagement 3 Improve care coordination 4 Expand population and public health 5 Ensure adequate privacy and security protection for personal health information
Meaningful use standards provide minimal criteria for securing and delivering electronic health records. Although the term “meaningful use” is now outdated, the ideas behind the term are not. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the goal of meaningful use standards are as follows:
Your office cannot simply set up a free website and expect patients to allow their medical data to be posted there! But good news: patient portals are safe.
HIPAA privacy rules offer protections that grow with children. Parents have full access to their child’s account up to a certain age, at which point teens take control of their own health, often through a portal that makes this automatic.
Staff will spend less time on data entry. When you consider that registration information must be provided by every patient, you quickly realize the enormous amount of time your office staff spends entering that data into your computer system.
With 2014 just around the corner, practices that are moving on to Stage 2 of the federal meaningful use (MU) incentive program must prepare to meet the new re-quirements.
Start early. It takes considerable time to introduce your patients to the features available through your portal—and even longer to get them into the habit of using it regularly. “We knew that we had to embrace this new technology as part of the MU requirements and did not want to wait until the last minute to begin implementation,” said Ms.
When your patient portal goes live, should you roll out multiple features all at once or implement one component at a time?
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.
PHMG launched the patient portal in early 2010. As a first step, the physician champion piloted the portal for about 6 months before it was implemented in one clinic at a time. According to the physician champion, implementation was “easier than expected because everyone was already comfortable with eClinicalWorks, ...
It’s really very easy to use. If you use the Internet, you’ll most likely find the portal helpful and easy to navigate. They found that it is particularly persuasive when providers encourage patients to use the portal because patients trust providers and value their opinions.
One major challenge with the portal is the multiple step registration process . Patients provide their e‐mail address at the front desk and are given a password to register from home. Some patients fail to complete the registration process after leaving the clinic. Remembering and managing passwords and managing family accounts are also challenging for patients. For example, a parent may log in for one child and then ask questions about a second child. For providers and staff, a challenge is that there is no way to know whether a Web‐enabled patient actually uses the portal and there are no read receipts to confirm that patients have read a message.
In 2007 PHMG implemented an EHR system, eClinicalWorks, as part of a strategy to improve quality of care and facilitate coordination of care across its multiple clinic locations. In preparing for implementation, PHMG proceeded with:
PHMG had a strategy of ensuring that patients hear about the portal from multiple sources during each clinical visit. To execute this strategy, PHMG used several methods of communication, including:
Other reasons to implement a portal include: To foster better patient-physician relationships: Portals offer a round-the-clock platform on which both parties can conveniently exchange health information, ask questions, and review medical notes—providing more opportunities to connect.
Collect patients’ email addresses: Patients usually have to provide their email address to register for access to your portal. If you start collecting addresses early in the implementation process, you’ll be able to hit the ground running once the portal goes live.
Highlight: Allows patients to send messages from the portal to the healthcare provider in a safe and secure manner. Provides patients with a convenient alternative to face-to-face appointments, telephone contact, letters, and e-mails to send messages.
Texas Neurology launched its patient portal in 2010 in conjunction with its EHR implementation. That allowed the practice to make workflow changes that increased efficiency, offsetting some of the extra work that comes with electronic record-keeping.
Giving patients electronic access to at least some of the information in their medical records is one element of a national plan for a robust health care information technology infrastructure that helps improve patient care and reduce unnecessary costs.
This is the first year that physician practices can be eligible for Stage 2 incentives. But to date, fewer than 8,000 physicians or other eligible providers have attested to meeting Stage 2 requirements.