Patient portals are designed to provide patients with more access to their health and medical data online. What the patient portal offers a patient depends entirely on the vendor and health care provider. The main use of the patient portal was to give access to the lab results, health history, physician notes, communications, allergies and discharge summaries.
Patient portal application development has increased a lot in the last one decade. This number is still the same. About 90 percent of online medical practices have started using patient portals to help their patients gain more access.
Patient portals help with providing more patient engagement as well. Many patient portals are coming with more than just accessing data, and the new portals have features of bi-directional messaging, prescription refill requests, online appointment booking, etc. All these functions depend on the host.
Since patient portals came in, they have become the hot topic for health organizations worldwide. Due to these meaningful systems, patients have gained more access to their health. Some healthcare organizations switched to patient portals to increase their patient engagement, some for other reasons. However, since the portals are still new for some hospitals, many providers are still confused about whether to invest in one or not.
In this blog, we will be talking about the use and want of patients for portals. Do hospitals use these systems, and are patient portals worth the effort or not?
Do patients want a patient portal?
Do patients who already have patient portals even access them or use them? The answer is yes due to following reasons -
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Most of the patients who have access to secured online patient portals use them. Out of this, the 50 percent who do not have, want one.
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Forty-one percent of the doctors from the US have already switched to patient portals.
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Older people can also use patient portals. Out of the 80% old patients in the US, only 28% have access to patient portals.
Do hospitals use these systems?
This can be easily answered by looking around us. For example, a survey showed that about 80% of healthcare organizations have planned to develop a patient portal system or already have one in use.
Is it worth investing in a patient portal system?
There are a lot of reasons behind the investments in patient portal systems by businesses. The following are listed below.
Benefits of using a patient portal -
1. Patient portals help providers meet their requirements -
One of the first benefits of using patient portals is that it fulfills providers' requirements. About 80% of patients need to easily access their health records with a download or viewing section. Out of this, only 36% receive this with a secure message. One of the main factors that providers need to add into their systems is that the patient information should be listed under non-clinical cases and clinical cases. With these measures, organizations can accomplish the use of patient portals in the most effective way.
2. Better patients and doctor relationships -
With the help of clinic web portals, you can open ways to build a closer physician and patient relationship. The safest example of this is the use of secure messaging. Healthcare organizations could securely message their patients as early as 2015. Now, more health care providers are taking advantage of this and using new modes of connecting with their patients from online portals.
This bi-directional messaging method between providers and patients can help increase patient engagement and satisfy them more. Patient engagement modes help health care providers gain more ownership over their patient’s health and wellness. With the help of meaningful conversations, providers can educate their patients more and more informed decisions for future cases.
With the help of secure online messaging, providers can also create a strong bond with the patients, and they will come back to the same provider for future problems. So provider loyalty has benefits. They improve the consistency of patient care and also make the patient feel comfortable.
3. Better clinical outcomes -
With a strong patient-provider relationship, patient portals can also help with making requests for prescription refills and getting referrals easier. This convenience will lead to much greater patient compliance and more improved clinical outcomes.
Patient portals can easily increase patient outcomes by giving better care coordination, educating patients about their conditions, and improved communication between patients and providers. In addition, with the help provider's notes, patients can adhere better to the medication because then they no longer have to engage in treatment plans.
4. Better workflow in offices -
With the help of patient web portals, medical staff members can access the tasks electronically, which in traditional modes required assistance from medical office teams. With patients now accessing everything online, the staff has less time scheduling appointments, writing refills, or answering questions. Ultimately giving medical staff more efficiency with their work.
5. Expenses are reduced -
In a traditional hospital setting, the fee structure was only increasing. Making it difficult for many patients to keep themselves and their pockets healthy. But ever since the increase in patient portals, patients and organizations can both save a ton of money. Now that all medical appointments are handled online, paperwork has been reduced, and the patient does not have to pay for offline services.
No-show patients can also reduce expenses if you use a patient portal system.No-show is when a patient does not show up for their appointment. These no-show appointments used to cost a lot of money to hospitals every year. But now, with patient portals, patients are notified about their appointment, and if they want to cancel their appointment anytime, they like to.
6. Cost-effective bill collections for patients -
When patients can pay medical bills via an online patient portal, they can easily improve their revenue cycle management. About 60 percent of patients prefer to use digital services more than offline. This includes paying medical bills. In addition, about 25% of patients have said that digital modes of payment are the best service they received from their physician.
7. Improved patient outcomes -
With the help of web clinic patient portals, hospitals can deliver enhanced patient outcomes. These portals have the ability to upload easy and user-generated medical data from the wearable devices connected to them, mobile medical devices, etc.
From the view of hospitals, having full access to patient's data in real-time is a must for all clinics in the world. With the help of this health information of a patient, providers can make better diagnosis and treatment plans.
Conclusion
All of this is only possible if you get a good health web portal for your organization. If your patient portal lacks these features, then patients will not want to use these. If the patient education platform on your portal is confusing or is hard to navigate, then again, it won't be used by anyone. Make sure you have solved all the technical issues with the application.
So, if your hospital is planning to implement this software in their systems, then do it right for the first time only. It is important to plan everything to ensure your patient portal provides a good user experience. Make sure this system runs on a modern integration engine. This will help patients access their health data more efficiently and make sure your portal can easily be connected to different applications and devices. Then you can decide on the functions and design of your patient portal.