In 2020, nearly 40% of individuals nationwide accessed their medical records via a patient portal, and demand for patient-centric, engaging technology is only increasing. But in addition to the benefits for patients, what are the important benefits of patient portals for providers?
The straightforward answer is that using an efficient patient portal can reduce the time staff and patients spend on administrative, clinical, and billing tasks, lowering staff burnout rates. A happy team fosters a satisfied clientele, resulting in fewer cancellations and no-shows. What’s more, portals are also an effective way to improve communication through messaging features that allow direct access to information and data, limiting the potential for misunderstanding.
But what other optimizations can a patient portal offer your practice behind the scenes? Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of patient portals, from a provider’s perspective. We’ll explore how a fully integrated portal with customizable features can improve and automate lead-tracking efforts, patient engagement, and more!
Key Benefits of Patient Portals: Digital Intake and Lead Tracking
In healthcare, the essential tasks for lead tracking include understanding how new patients make first contact and where they are in the care hierarchy of your clinic, along with determining the action needed to move that patient to the next level of care. This information is incredibly useful for improving patient outcomes and experiences as well as tracking trends that can drive future business-level decisions.
Here’s some sage advice: Don’t manually do tasks that your EMR system should do digitally. This includes lead tracking.
Which Leads Can Be Automated?
The leads tracking components that can be automated are limited only by the customization capacity of your EMR platform. If your EMR system, including your patient portal, is optimized to provide your patients with the best online experience possible, you can easily automate several forms of lead generation and tracking, including:
- Electronic referrals, or eReferrals. This refers to an EMR system’s ability to find and refer specialists directly from the EMR platform. It should include a function that keeps the patient informed of the referral status.
- Appointment or consultation requests. Patients can initiate contact via your website, so logging into the patient portal isn’t necessary.
- Patient portal appointment requests. This form of lead automation encourages patients to create a login for your portal and requires minimal input or staff direction.
Putting Patient Data to Better Use
The data collected through digital lead tracking is helpful in formulating a patient’s diagnosis, planning long-term treatment, coordinating referrals, and tracking patterns in the patient’s health. As an added benefit for your practice, digitizing patient records can also reduce errors and staff workload because the system is capable of automatically generating leads with little to no manual input. This feature is especially useful when setting up records for a new patient!
Another benefit to consider: The increased amount of data generated through digital tracking enables improved analysis with business intelligence tools. With an EMR platform that offers a robust set of business intelligence tools, you can effortlessly gain greater predictive accuracy as well as a clearer view of the current success of the practice.
Use a Patient Portal to Schedule New Referrals
Tracking and monitoring incoming and outgoing patient referrals, whether made through the patient portal or not, can be one of a practice’s biggest challenges. In fact, studies show that 60 to 70% of referrals are never scheduled!
That’s why automated notifications to both patients and providers about the status of an eReferral are a significant benefit of an EMR system that offers lead-tracking functionality within their patient portal.
Coupled with the tools that patient portals already bring to the table, such as secure messaging, appointment reminders that can reduce no-shows, and easily accessible lab results, providers that take advantage of lead-tracking technology can effortlessly boost quality of care and positive patient experiences.
Portals Make It Easy for Patients to Access Health Information
Beyond the benefits of lead tracking, patient portals offer a powerful benefit for any therapy and rehab practice: the ability for patients to take their healthcare into their own hands.
Using a patient portal allows patients to upload documents, provide insurance verification, and fill out questionnaires on their own time. In fact, by setting up automated reminders for patients to complete forms before a scheduled appointment, your front office staff can focus on other tasks while still maintaining an efficient waiting room.
What’s more, patients who log in to the portal can update their medical history and allergies to their patient profile as well as access a list of current prescriptions and lab or test results, which the EMR system then automatically saves to the patient record – ensuring it is available to providers for future appointments or transfers to a referral. This functionality can streamline documentation workflows by automatically filling out patient forms and help maintain an accurate record of care that can be accessed by the patient, provider, and referral providers.
The benefits are clear, so what can you do to ensure that your organization is cultivating proactive patients? The 2020 Health Information National Trends Survey results revealed that patient portal usage directly reflects the amount of encouragement the patient receives from their healthcare provider. Those who received encouragement had a higher portal usage rate than those who received none. Patient education is key!
The Most Complete Patient Portal for Therapy and Rehab
Need a platform that can do it all? Look no further! Raintree’s All-In-One EMR platform for PT, OT, SLP, and multi-specialty therapy practices includes a robust patient portal. Our patient engagement suite delivers a full arsenal of patient-centric features, automations, and communications templates, while also offering providers the tracking and analytical tools needed to deliver quality care right at their fingertips.
Interested? Request a demo!
