Patient Portals: A Door to Open Communication

The patient portal changed healthcare forever. Where it once felt impossible to understand, plan for, and address your medical care as a patient, this tool created a window that offered clarity. Patients are more eager than ever to be fully engaged in their care and work hand-in-hand with their physicians to address and prevent health concerns. A patient portal that is fully integrated into your practices Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management Software will open the door into patient engagement and open communication with your patients in the New Year and on.

How Does the Patient Portal Help?

1) Improve Physician-Patient Relationship

The patient portal has been instrumental in the development of the physician-patient relationship. It allows for better communication through a secure messaging center. Here, patients can as questions they feel are urgent or that they might have left out during their in-person visit. By opening the door for better communication, patients can more quickly address health concerns and their providers can inform them on what their next steps should look like.

This feature of the patient portal is also one of the quickest ways to build patient trust and improve your patient retention rates. The quicker a physician is to respond to a patients question through their patient portal, the more a patient feels they are listening to and care about their health concerns and goals. When a patient trusts their physician, the more likely they are to stay at your practice and refer others to your physicians.

2) Better Understand Their Health

The patient portal is also the quickest way to communicate test results, lab results, and for a patient to view and understand their personal health information. Where patients used to not pay attention to their health or found it difficult to access and understand, the patient portal has eliminated walls and boundaries to these factors.

By having clear and simple access to their PHI, patients can start to understand where they might need to make improvements in their routine and discuss with their physician about how to accomplish their goals. With this, a patient can gain a new understanding of their health.

3) Engage Their Care Head-On

With a newfound understanding of their personal health information and a physician-patient relationship founded on trust and respect, patients are often inspired to tackle their care head-on. The patient portal has proven to increase patient engagement for practices that utilize quality software. Not only will patients understand their health, but they will also begin to want more for themselves when they see their test results are not where they should be.

The patient portal inspires patients to work more closely with their physicians to stay compliant with their annual care and testing, visit more regularly, and remain compliant with follow-up care. This leads to improved outcomes for patients across the board.

4) Understand Their Medical Expenses

Not only does the patient portal enable patients to better understand the many complicated aspects of their medical care, but it also helps them understand their medical expenses. Medical bills have felt secretive and hidden to patients for a very long time and this tool sheds much-needed light on the subject. With the right patient portal, patients can now view, understand, and plan for their medical expenses as well as pay their bill in order to prevent from being overwhelmed by any costs. The right patient portal enables patients to pay by credit card and avoid from their account becoming delinquent.

There exists a plethora of patient portals available in the market, but not all will help your practice better communicate and work with your patients. To learn more about a patient portal that will help your practice succeed, click here.