Checklist: Features To Consider Before Choosing The Patient Portal Software
In the emerging technological world, healthcare providers are moving towards a digital healthcare change by implementing patient portal software, integrating EHR systems, and automating the billing process to improve the practice growth and to enhance quality care for their patients.
Even though patient portals are considered to be beneficial, still some healthcare facilities don’t know the real value it. So here are the core features to be considered before choosing the best patient portal software to get more patients involved.
Best Features To Check With The Patient Portal Software
1. Secure Messaging
Secure Messaging is the primary feature to check out in the best patient portal software as it enables both patients and healthcare practitioners to engage in secure communication. Guess how? When your patient portal is integrated with your EHR system, secure messaging provides an efficient way to exchange information with both patients and other providers.
Besides, secure messaging features that can be implemented through a variety of flexible deployment options have good prospects for application in chronic disease management within telehealth systems.
2. Easy Access To Personal Health Information
The key priority of the patient portal is to provide patients with convenient round-the-clock access to personal health information (PHI) via the Internet. Having entered a unique username and password, patients can browse (and print if necessary) health information including recent doctor visits; case reports; medication lists; immunizations; allergies; lab & test results. Patients want to see more than after-visit summaries and lab results.
3. Friendly User Interface For Patient Registration
Portals are beneficial in terms of managing the process of patient registration with ease. An inconsistent user interface is a major drawback for many patient portals. Disappointing experience with a patient portal can discourage patients from any further attempts to use it in the future.
Patient portals enable easy-to-perform sign in to get access to the records or complete patient forms for having a test, getting insights with health history data, tapping in immunization records, or lists of prescribed medication lists. Once the registration is designed with patients’ convenience in mind, it is highly likely that patient engagement will improve.
4. Online Appointment Scheduling
Online Appointment Scheduling is one of the most important features on the patient portal as it enables patients, regardless of their actual location, to make an appointment on a certain date or on those time slots that suit patients best. With the system settings tuned to users’ needs, this feature will surely make patients more inclined to involve in medical service practices so developers should be aware of providing efficient solutions in case making or confirming the appointment would be required.
5. Appointment Reminders
For today’s healthcare organizations, patients' experience is their top priority as it is very crucial for improving patient engagement. Developing this feature results in activating multiple channels for creating fail-proof appointment reminders by delivering text messages about the scheduled meetings, sending patients emails, or recorded messages. Making use of these features will automatically reduce tons of time of administrative staff on making calls for reminding patients about their appointments.
6. Access To Educational Materials
Patient portals can provide rich resources for easily increasing the patients’ awareness. Enabling patients’ instant access to educational health-related information can be viewed as one of the powerful patient engagement solutions.
Diagnoses and treatment plans can be difficult for patients to understand and remember. To reinforce this information, practices have been giving patients supplemental printed materials for years. And now, with a portal, patients can access these materials online. Patients can receive the content tailored to their conditions and delivered directly to their account.
7. Online payment options
According to a report by TransUnion, 62% of patients say that knowing their healthcare expenses in advance impacts the likelihood of their pursuing care, while 68% of healthcare consumers fail to pay off their medical bill balances fully.
To resolve these concerns, comprehensive solutions such as Vozo offer patient portal software with a wide range of payment options, providing patients with greater transparency when it comes to managing health finances.These features include e-payments, billing queries, insurance support, payment history and retrieval, and more.
Including this feature into the portal function, set allows physicians to track down customers for unsettled bills. This option is crucial not only for increasing the revenue cycle and patient portal utilization but also monitor and manage patient collections.
8. Integration with EHR
A patient portal that is integrated with the practice’s electronic medical records software can automatically update a patient’s records at the same time the results are inputted in the EMR.
While most patient portal solutions by default support integration with core EHR systems, by extending an open API, they can also connect to other third-party digital solutions and medical IoT devices, such as step counters, glucose monitors, or sleep trackers.
Final Thoughts
As the healthcare industry started moving towards value-based care, enhancing patient portal software helps the healthcare providers to promote proactive patient self-care and also to increase patient collections.
VOZO patient portal software provides a comprehensive solution to help healthcare providers achieve clinical, financial, and operational excellence through a powerful patient portal. Patients can request appointments, access health records, lab results, and even pay bills online with the help of a patient portal, which creates a personal touch with you always.
