The Importance Of Patient Portals

Patient portals are healthcare related online application that allow patients to interact and communicate with healthcare providers, such as physicians and hospitals. Typical portal service is available on the internet at all hours of the day and night. Some patient portals applications exist as stand-alone web sites and sell their services to health care providers. Other portal applications are integrated into existing web site of a health care provider. Still others are modules added onto an existing electronic medical record systems. What all of these services share is ability of patients to interact with their medical information via the internet. Portal applications for individual practices typically exist in tandem with patient portals, allowing access to patient information and records. As well as schedules, payments, and messages from patients. Portals can be used to send educational materials and preventive and chronic care alerts to patients. Although less common, some practices use portals for online bill paying, telehealth, health risk assessments, or filling forms. Bill paying features, which
Then assign staff to respond promptly to email inquiries, upload patient information into the portal on a timely basis if the electronic health record is not capable of automatically linking the information, and monitor the status of the appointment schedule. Delays in responding to patients over the patient portal is one of the easiest ways to discourage patients from using the service. It will defeat one of the primary reasons patients use the portal, the ability to connect directly to with the physician or the provider. One of the key ways to incorporate portal use into the routine practice workflow is to simply use it. For example, follow up patient phone calls with an email that contains the link to the patient. (Crane,