You can think of patient portals as the Swiss Army knives of medical software. They’re unbelievably versatile. Patient portals are usually used to improve the quality of healthcare provided to the patients. It enables better communication between physicians and their patients. It helps build a better patient-physician relationship and gives the patients more control over their treatment.
Patients can have information whenever and wherever they need it. They can check lab results, prescriptions, update insurance information, manage unpaid balances, and more. According to a survey, 90% adoption of patient portal software in healthcare is the major means to keep up with the health metrics.
Healthcare officials also encourage the use of multipurpose healthcare portals to digitize key parts of the medical workflow. Portals are used to handle administrative and clinical functions as well. It enables patients to be more engaged with their care team.
This article will discuss what exactly a patient portal is and how to pick the perfect patient portal development company for your business. We’ll break down everything you need to know before purchasing a patient portal. We’ll also discuss:
Patient Portal: A Brief Overview
Patient portals were developed to improve the way healthcare providers interact. They are used to provide patients with timely access to their healthcare - specifically, access to their healthcare information.
Patient portals are mainly used to retrieve lab results, solve queries, ask questions, update patient profiles, and provide insurance information. Using a patient portal increases patient engagement, promotes loyalty, manages costs, and streamlines workflows. Some patient portals allow patients to schedule appointments and pay bills directly through the software/portal.
Key Advantages of Patient Portals
According to a survey of 232 patients, it was found that 72% of them had access to a patient portal. The fact that patient portals are catching on so quickly shows its unique advantages.
Percentage of Patients’ Access to Portals
Here are all the more reasons to implement a patient portal:
I. Increased Office Efficiency
Implementing a patient portal for your medical practice can increase your office efficiency as it makes communication between you and your patients easier. This helps you save time. Processes like signing up new clients become easy as patients can fill out information electronically. Your data is saved digitally, and you do not need to maintain records manually. This also reduces errors and inconsistencies in information.
II. Streamlined Workflow
With patient portals, you can streamline the workflows in your office. By moving your communication online, you can prevent your receptionists and nurses from answering the same questions repeatedly. This way, your office staff can focus on more urgent healthcare needs.
III. Tele-medicine
Through a patient portal, you can successfully reduce the number of unnecessary patient visits to your clinic. It enables patients to consult with you through the messaging system. For example, patients do not need to visit the physician simply to change the medication doses. Hence instead of scheduling a physical visit, patients can just consult the physician online by booking their appointments.
IV. Reduces Medical Errors
When your staff takes phone calls, they have to rely on information that patients give them. This may lead to misinterpretations of patient needs and medical issues. But, if you can receive written messages from patients themselves, you can convey accurate information throughout.
Telemedication leads to effective patient medication. Before a physician prescribes any drug, the software can automatically check for drug-to-allergy based on patients’ diagnosis and current medication.
V. Patient-centered Care
With the entry of patient portals, the medical industry’s focus has shifted toward patient-centered care. Organizations offering patients access to their medical records are at an all-time high. Hence, an increasing number of patients are demanding the same.
Portals also offer around-the-clock support. Both parties can conveniently exchange health information, ask questions, and review medical notes. Patients do not have to wait for lab results over the phone or by mail. They can simply access them through the patient dashboard.
Patient Portal Development: Feature Analysis
Patient portal development is not an easy task. Making an informed decision is a must. Take time to understand your peculiar needs and decide what functionalities you want in your portal. Separate the “must-have” capabilities from the “nice-to-haves.” Prioritize according to your needs. Here’s a feature guide to help you out:
1. Patient Registration
Patient onboarding is the most important part of healthcare services. And a benefit of the patient portal is that it eases the registration process. Your portal must enable an easy sign-in registration process. Patient onboarding must be smooth.
You need to design the registration process with the patients’ convenience in mind. When signing in, you can ask them to fill a form to know their medical history, previously prescribed medication, health reports, and underlying conditions. This data can be stored in the patients’ profiles. This way, it is more likely that patient engagement will improve.
Patient portal development requires a multi-tier solution that can manage access based on role and smoothly across the levels. Other than patient management, the healthcare portal requires employee management, supplier management, and partner management. This way, it can help manage staff, treat patients, get medical supplies, and partner with laboratories, all from a single interface. CRMJetty’s patient portal makes it all possible. It comes with robust entity management features. Talk to our experts today and find out more.
2. Appointment Scheduling
Online appointment scheduling is also an important feature in the patient portal development process. It enables patients to book appointments anytime, regardless of their location. With a calendar integrated with your portal, patients can view if the slots and dates they’re looking for are available or not. This feature can be a game-changer to optimize time utilization as it automatically eliminates unnecessary appointments off the schedule.
3. Prescription Management
Your patient portal must have a feature for tele-medication. The ongoing treatment, repeated medical procedures often require patients to access prescription refills. By facilitating this process, professionals can expect an increase in patient engagement online. This way, you reduce the physical footfall at your premises.
4. Patient Help Center
Patient portals can also be used to provide self-service resources to the patients. This can help you shape healthy habits as well. Physicians and admins can include health-related information in the form of FAQs and a knowledge base. This can prove to be a powerful patient engagement solution as well. Patients can receive the content tailored to their conditions and delivered directly to their accounts.
5. Online Payment Management
According to a study, implementing a patient portal has brought some crucial positive changes and raised patient payments by 4% to 8%. Including this feature in your patient portal allows physicians to track down customers for unsettled payments. You can also let them manage the insurance and medical-claim information through the portal. This helps to increase the revenue cycle and saves a lot of time for everyone involved.
6. Healthcare Record Management
Patients view the healthcare record module and have a bird’s eye view of their health data. Patients can access all their reports so they can see the changes in their reports and have a complete map of their data. It can also work as a repository of patient’s blood reports, treatment progress reports, medication, X-ray reports, and other scans and reports needed in their treatment.
7. Notifications
With this feature, patients can get notifications and reminders for regular checkups, necessary tests, report pickup, etc. This will make sure that the patients do not miss their appointments. It also eliminates the hassle of remembering checkup routines.
8. Features for Admin Tasks
Admin features are purely designed to help the administrative staff to ease healthcare management. They can keep track of medical supplies in the hospital and manage them from within the portal. They can manage schedules for doctors and nursing staff.
They can also set schedules for emergencies. Apart from that, they can manage the doctor’s schedules for consultations and checkups. The admins can also update lab reports to the patient’s profile, so doctors and patients always get a current overview of their health data.
How to Select The Right Patient Portal
Once you decide the portal you want to develop, do not jump into picking the first patient portal development company you come across. Analyze these things beforehand:
1. Research Pricing and Set Your Budget
Budget is an important aspect for selecting the right patient portal development company. Your budget often reflects how robust your portal can/will be. You can call in your team of experts for this one. Do not jump for the cheapest solution out there. Analyze and compare various patient portal development services and then make a decision.
Find out how CRMJetty creates a perfect solution for healthcare companies. We are known to provide a robust, feature-rich, and niche-based solution to cater to your particular needs. Check out CRMJetty’s pricing or request a free quote.
2. Compare Product through Free Trials
Do not stick to a single option. Try free trials for multiple products. One of the most important parts of a patient portal is to provide a simple and effective UI. Patients should feel comfortable logging in and solving their queries with minimal guidance.
3. Go Through Product Testimonials
Once you compare various patient portal development services using free trials, you can narrow down your options. The next thing to do would be to check out product testimonials. Find out if the portal’s functionality is up to mark and specific to your need or not. Find out how their customer support is and how they solve other customer’s problems.
4. Keep Your Patient Priorities on Top of Everything
While selecting your patient portal development features, do not just go for all the popular features. Include features that your customers would want you to include.
For example, if you are someone with less administrative staff and your staff is always busy responding to patient queries, you might want to include admin automation features that would reduce the efforts of both the staff and patients.
Shortlist the features as per your needs. Then find a patient portal development partner who can implement those features exactly as you need.
5. Work with Experts
Working with experts is essential; therefore, we suggest you work with a patient portal development company with years of experience in healthcare development. Work with someone who can identify your current problems and resolve them with the help of portal technology in healthcare.
Patient Portal Development with CRMJetty
With the advent of online platforms, it is clear that using a patient portal can provide multiple benefits for your medical practice. Patient portals have seen a tremendous rise and have provided great results in healthcare due to their vast capabilities. Patient portals significantly contribute to streamlining your healthcare services, generating a bigger revenue for medical establishments.
After accounting for the considerations mentioned above, you must now have an idea of what exactly you need. The only decision left to make is what platform you would pick. When the core functionality of the patient portal is designed and created by experts, patient engagement becomes a major win.
Are you having difficulty finding a partner for patient portal development? Consider taking a look at CRMJetty’s healthcare solutions. We are a patient portal development company that caters to all business needs. We specialize in offering customized patient portal solutions with consideration of the specific needs of healthcare officials. Our healthcare management software can help you level up your healthcare management workflow. It enables you to deliver on, and exceed, patients’ expectations. Connect with our experts to digitize your healthcare services.
Source : https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/patient-portal-development-guide/
