How to Advocate Your Patient Portal at Your Practice

The patient portal has become one of the most important parts of medical practices across the country. New technology offers total software integration that enables your practice to communicate more easily with patients and them with you, collect patient payments 24/7, and securely detail a patient’s entire medical history. This tool increases patient engagement at your organization by giving individuals a secure route to ask questions, learn about their own health, and schedule appointments. The patient portal revolutionized the delivery of health care to patients everywhere. Although this tool has been in use by healthcare organizations for many years, not every patient has been quick to climb on board. Below are some ways your practice can advocate your patient portal and get more patients to utilize such an amazing tool.

Educate Your Patients

For patients who are hesitant to sign up for the patient portal or maybe do not know how to, education is the best tool for getting them involved. Informational handouts that detail how your patient can sign up, what the benefits of the software are, and how they can use it are all important details to make sure you communicate to them. The more your patients know about the tool and the easier it is for them to access it, the more likely they are to try it. Try hanging posters around your practice, handing out informational sheets, or detailing it to your patients at check-in.

Simplify Registration

Another step in making it as easy as possible for your patients to sign up and access your patient portal is to simplify the registration process. Kiosks or tablets dedicated to patient portal registration at your organization will prompt many patients to sign up before they leave the building. Having an option to register readily available will prevent patients from forgetting to sign up when they get home while having your team readily available should they have questions.

Communicate the Details

Letter campaigns, emails, and other communication tools can be great for getting the news out there. Using these tools to inform patients of your new patient portal and its usefulness can remind and prompt patients to sign up. Include details that educate patients on the simple scheduling and billing features included in the patient portal.

Get Your Staff Involved

The more your staff knows, the better. Your staff should be asking, at every opportunity, whether or not a patient has signed up for the patient portal. Your staff should be prepared to answer any question the patient might ask about the technology and be ready to get them signed up at any moment. The more staff involvement you have, the more patient engagement you will see in return.

Link the Patient Portal on Your Website

Options to access your patient portal should be everywhere so that your patient has every opportunity to utilize the technology. A link to your patient portal should be clearly displayed on your website so that your patients can quickly find and use it. This way, your patient only has to remember two details and those are the name of your website and their login information.

Preferred Use at Your Practice

Rather than trying to communicate with your patients across multiple platforms, you should be using the patient portal as your preferred method of communication within your organization. Here, you should send out the bulk of your practice messaging and announcements while also communicating with patients one-on-one.

To learn more about a quality patient portal that will be simple for your practice to implement and easy for your patients to use, click here.