A patient portal is a secure online website that gives patients convenient 24/7 access to their personal health information and medical records from anywhere with an internet connection. Developing a high-quality patient portal has become necessary for healthcare providers seeking to improve patient engagement, satisfaction, and outcomes through enhanced transparency, access, communication, and self-management tools.
This guide will walk healthcare organizations through best practices for developing and implementing a patient portal aligned with strategic goals and equipped to deliver ROI.
Why Invest in a Patient Portal?
Here are key reasons healthcare providers are prioritizing patient portal development:
Patient Engagement, Loyalty, and Satisfaction
Easy access to test results, treatment plans, educational content, and care team messaging fosters patient empowerment. This is especially true if you additionally use a mhealth app development because it delivers convenience that builds provider loyalty.
Streamlines Administrative Processes
Portals reduce phone call volume to staff and free up resources via administrative time-savers like self-scheduling, prescription refill requests, billing/payment options, and medical record access.
Supports Population Health Initiatives
Access to health data gives patients more involvement in managing chronic conditions, coordination across care settings, medication adherence and preventative health.
Compliance with Regulatory Requirements
Patient portals and interoperability capabilities are mandated under recent laws, such as the 21st Century Cures Act, to enable health information exchange and patient data access.
Competitive Differentiation
A high-functioning, user-friendly portal helps attract and retain patients while reinforcing a provider’s reputation as an innovative, patient-centric organization.
Defining Your Patient Portal Strategy and Capabilities
Carefully evaluating needs and identifying top priorities is crucial for effectively allocating patient portal development and implementation resources.
Step 1: Conduct Patient Research
Gather insights from your patients on their portal expectations through surveys, focus groups, and user testing during planning and development. Key questions to ask:
- What portal features and content add the most value for managing your health?
- How likely are you to actively utilize a patient portal if our organization offered one?
- What limitations or barriers prevent you from adopting and engaging with the portal?
Step 2: Set Goals and KPIs
Define 2-3 top portal adoption, engagement, or healthcare delivery goals you want to achieve, such as:
- increase patient satisfaction scores by 15% within the first year of launch;
- reduce no-show appointment rates by 10% in the portal user population;
- 30% of patients registered on the portal within 6 months of launch.
Set corresponding KPIs to track and optimize accordingly.
Step 3: Prioritize Features
Consider your organization’s key initiatives and patient feedback to determine which capabilities will be most impactful for your portal:
Core baseline functionality:
- secure access to health records and test results;
- messaging with the care team;
- self-scheduling, prescription refills, and bill pay.
Engagement-driving tools:
- health data tracking and graphs;
- medication lists and refill reminders;
- patient education content and care plans.
Specialty service line features:
- physician referral requests;
- virtual waiting room for video visits;
- symptom checkers and risk assessment tools.
Integrating Your Patient Portal Technology
Seamlessly connecting your portal with key backend systems like your EHR, billing platform, and other technologies is imperative for patients and staff to realize the portal’s full value.
Critical System Integration Considerations
EHR platform: Integrate with EHR APIs for bi-directional health records and data exchange and ensure compliance with interoperability standards like FHIR and SMART on FHIR.
Identity management: Enable single sign-on across patient portal, EHR, and other provider applications to reduce friction and allow unified patient profile access.
Billing system: Support eligibility checks, claims status lookups, payment processing, and financial assistance screening from the billing system within the portal experience.
Referral management: Allow patients to submit online physician referral requests and automatically populate relevant medical history data.
Telehealth: Incorporate virtual visit functionality like video chat, screen sharing, e-prescriptions, and post-visit documentation workflows.
Patient outreach: Connect portal messaging and notifications with the CRM system for coordinated, personalized engagement campaigns when new records or care reminders are available.
Analytics: Track portal engagement metrics and tie usage data to clinical, operational, and financial performance indicators for maximized ROI.
Optimizing Patient Adoption and Engagement
Driving patient awareness of your portal’s availability and benefits is crucial for spurring sign-ups and feature utilization.
Promote Enrollment and Set Expectations
Educate patients on portal access instructions and value proposition through welcome kits, emails, signage, support center FAQs and conversations with care teams during visits. Set expectations that the portal is an integral tool patients will need to participate actively in their care journey.
Incentivize Usage Through Convenience Features
Encourage patients to establish portal accounts by offering immediate incentives like self-scheduling for upcoming appointments or easy access to new test results. Reinforce ongoing value through medication management tools, direct messaging with physicians, and health record release forms.
Spotlight New Features and Content
Keep patients engaged long-term by continuously enhancing your portal with updated features and educational content tailored to different condition management needs. Promote through announcements on your website or targeted emails when new tools relevant to specific patient segments are released.
Analyze Usage Data and Optimize
Leverage portal analytics to identify adoption trends and usage patterns based on patient age, condition, or location. Conduct user surveys to surface pain points. Refine features and engagement campaigns accordingly to maximize patient response.
Steps for Vetting and Selecting Your Vendor
Define functional requirements: Outline must-have portal features based on patient feedback, stakeholder requests, and strategic goals. Prioritize which capabilities are immediately crucial vs. nice-to-have items for future roadmap.
Evaluate technical capabilities: Assess vendor medical record data integrations, identity management, cloud hosting, and security protocols. Ensure compliance with healthcare regulations.
Compare offerings: Request demos from 3-5 vendors to review side-by-side how each platform meets defined requirements. Compare strengths and weaknesses.
Check references: Speak with 3 of the vendor’s current customers similar to your organization to ask about their implementation and support experience.
Assess services model and support: Review service level agreements and support model. Ensure adequate implementation, training, and post-launch customer success processes are available.
Total cost of ownership: Price all platform subscription fees, implementation services, required third-party software, and ongoing support costs over 3-5 years.
Conclusion
Implementing a patient portal is a complex endeavor, but when done right, it pays dividends in engagement, loyalty, and health outcomes. Focus on understanding patients’ needs and making portal access a convenient, valuable part of their care journey.
Following the best practices outlined in this guide will equip healthcare organizations to develop portals advancing population health and organizational performance.
Myself Snehil Prakash aka Chief Saasologist of Howtobuysaas. I am a saas marketer, who loves studying evolving software that is bringing change to the world. Share the same with people via howtobuysaas platform.
