March 18, 2020 - Parul Saini, Webmedy Team
Patient Portals are a commonly talked-about technology in a doctor's tool area, but how can they utilize the patient portal to increase patient engagement?
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Patient Portals are an online website that is combined with an EHR, primarily aimed at facilitating patient access to health data. These tools provide patients a look into different data points, containing lab results, physician notes, past health records, discharge summaries, and prescriptions.
There are two main kinds of patient portals: a standalone system and a combined service. Combined patient portal software functionality usually comes as a part of an EHR system, or practice management software. But at their most basic, they're just web-based tools.
Patient portals are essentially utilized to retrieve patient's medical information, getting lab results, for query or for updating patient profiles. Some patient portals also enable patients to plan appointments and handle bills instantly through the system. For providers, they serve as an opportunity to improve patient engagement, increase loyalty, control costs and streamline workflows.
Patients can use the portal to perform tasks that would usually need to need a phone call or even multiple phone calls. This facility for patients to request appointments and medicine refills quickly from the portal increases the performance of your clinical staff, providing them to have their focus on helping you with the patients who have the most critical care requirements and issues.
Patient portals give intake forms to be completed electronically before appointment check-in, having front-office work accomplished. This means that rather than walking patients through which forms to fill out and how, your front office team can quickly review submitted information and reduce the enrollment time, assuring that by the time the patient sees the doctor, they feel comfortable with the official side of things and can focus on their reason for the appointment.
The facility to quickly enter and share patient data electronically helps to reduce one of the main distractions, that doctors have during their workday. This allows you to focus more effectively on the patient and the care plan that you need to formulate for your patient.
Patient portals give the capability for patients to have 24-hour access to their health information, connect with their doctor via secure messaging, thus making the patient-physician bond closer than ever.
More and more healthcare organizations have started their patient portals as the medical industry has moved focus toward patient-centered care. Organizations giving patients access to their medical records are at an all-time high. As a result, a growing number of patients are engaging up and actively utilizing these services.
Patient portals can also reduce the number of avoidable patient visits to your office, enabling you to more focus on patients who require to see you. This can help promote telemedicine, which allows patients to discuss with you by the messaging system. For example, rather than scheduling an appointment to see their doctor for a change in medicine doses, the patient could question you about it through the patient portal. This feature lets you have that appointment open for a patient who either has a sickness that requires analysis and medicine in-person or one who requires urgent medical care.
If your practice has not yet started benefiting by using a patient portal, here are reasons to get started now:
It can be challenging, at the start, to have patients sign up for and utilize the portal. Having a plan and consistently applying it will help. Here are a few tips:
According to a paper from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), it was reported that over 90% of hospitals provide patients to obtain their medical records, with 72% of organizations providing patients full picture, download, and transfer capabilities. With that being told, for over half of these means, less than 25% of patients choose and use them.
Healthcare organizations are operating on appending extra tools and features, partially to make more patients connected during their treatment process. The many perks of a patient portal are worth the beginning work of getting everyone on board. With routine use, your practice should see higher patient engagement and fulfillment, and a more streamlined workflow that conserves time and effort for staff and physicians.
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