Patient portal technology provides each patient with a private, password-protected electronic space that houses information about his or her medical care.
Though EHRs are dominating the healthcare IT headlines, there are a number of other systems available, like portals, that you can implement easily and use to make immediate, positive changes to your operations. This article is the third in a four-part series highlighting the technologies you should start using to improve your practice.
Simplify Communication
Consider your current system for communicating with a patient about his lab work results.
Upon receiving the test results, you probably locate the patient’s file, place the results in his file, and put the file on the stack of files needing to be reviewed by the physician. Once the doctor’s had time to assess the results, someone is assigned to mail the results, call the patient to discuss them, or both.
The time between that letter arriving in your office and the patient being contacted can add up to days, even close to a week. While the lab results shuffle through your office, that patient waits anxiously for critical news about his health.
Instituting a patient portal through your practice website can streamline that process in a revolutionary way. Check out one provider’s patient portal home page as an example.
Imagine if, once those lab results got to your office, they could be quickly reviewed and passed on to your patient directly through his portal. He’d immediately receive an email notifying him that the results were available for review and could log in to check them out.
Portals provide patients with more control and knowledge of their health care information. If our hypothetical patient’s test results are problematic, logging in privately affords him time to think them over and develop questions prior to being contacted by a medical professional. If the results are benign, he now has peace of mind – far ahead of schedule.
The most advanced patient portals are incorporated with EHR systems and offer many other valuable features, including appointment request forms, messaging capabilities (for patients to reach doctors and vice-versa), bill payment options, and prescription refill forms.
A portal’s features digitize traditional front-office tasks, so implementing a portal saves time and may decrease your need for a large administrative staff.
“The cost of running a practice can be reduced by using a portal,” says Rosemarie Nelson, a consultant for the Medical Group Management Association. “If we get patients off the phone, we get staff off the phone. If staff aren’t on the phone, they’re doing something else or we need less staff.”
Have you deployed patient portal technology? How has it changed doctor-patient communication?
Check out our previous “Other Tech” stories on digital scheduling systems and waiting room kiosks, and be sure to come back next week when we’ll discuss how different types of digital voice recognition systems can simplify your transcription process.
Madelyn Young is a Content Writer for CareCloud and an expert on practice management, medical billing, HIPAA 5010, ICD-10, and revenue cycle management. You can read her work on Power Your Practice and the CareCloud Blog. Contact Madelyn with story suggestions, contributor articles, or any other feedback at madelyn@poweryourpractice.com or follow her on Twitter @madelyn_young.
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