patient portal meaning

by Prof. Angelina Gottlieb IV 6 min read
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Full Answer

How do you set up a patient portal?

With My Seton Health, you have access to:

  • A Summary of treatment during your hospital stay
  • A list of active medications
  • Your hospital discharge instructions
  • Lab and vital sign results

What are the benefits of a patient portal?

eventually benefit the interactive patients engagement accessibility solutions in the market. • Access to the patient portal may improve patient engagement and change the way healthcare is delivered, healthcare improvements are associated with specific ...

How do I access my Patient Portal?

You Choose the When and the Where

  • Use the Portal from anywhere using a browser
  • Access from your smartphone or tablet
  • Manage information 24X7, without waiting

How to access patient portal?

Access Patient Portal. Click Settings > Patient Portal . The Patient Portal Dashboard page launches in a web browser. An alternate way to access the Patient Portal is to: Open a web browser and type portal.kareo.com in the address bar. Click For Doctors on the bottom. The Patient Portal landing page opens. Click Sign in on the upper right.

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What is the meaning of patient portal?

A patient portal is a secure online website that gives patients convenient, 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an Internet connection. Using a secure username and password, patients can view health information such as: Recent doctor visits. Discharge summaries. Medications.

Why is a patient portal important?

A patient portal is a website for your personal health care. The online tool helps you to keep track of your health care provider visits, test results, billing, prescriptions, and so on. You can also e-mail your provider questions through the portal. Many providers now offer patient portals.

What should be included in a patient portal?

A robust patient portal should include the following features:Clinical summaries.Secure (HIPAA-compliant) messaging.Online bill pay.New patient registration.Ability to update demographic information.Prescription renewals and contact lens ordering.Appointment requests.Appointment reminders.More items...

How do you use patient portals?

0:068:41How to use a patient portal - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipHow to use your patient. Portal. The purpose of this video is to show you how to use a patientMoreHow to use your patient. Portal. The purpose of this video is to show you how to use a patient portal patient portals are secure websites provided by your gp or medical center you can use patient

What types of patient portals are there?

There are two main types of patient portals: a standalone system and an integrated service. Integrated patient portal software functionality usually comes as a part of an EMR system, an EHR system or practice management software. But at their most basic, they're simply web-based tools.

Do patients use patient portals?

Among individuals who were offered a patient portal, about eight in 10 were encouraged by their health care provider to use it. Seventy-one percent of individuals encouraged by their health care provider accessed their portal at least once in the past year compared to 48 percent who were not encouraged.

What is the difference between personal health records and patient portals?

A patient portal is a type of personal health record (PHR) that is connected to an electronic health record (EHR) system. Patient portals provide a secure website through which patients can access their clinical data.

What is the most popular patient portal?

Top 10 Patient Portal Software By EMRSystemsEpic EHR Software's MyChart.athenahealth EMR Software's athenaCommunicator.PrognoCIS EMR Software.Cerner Specialty Practice Management Software.eClinicalWorks EMR Software's Patient Portal and Healow App.Greenway PrimeSUITE EHR Software.NextGen Healthcare EHR Software.More items...•

What are the benefits and challenges of using patient portals?

What are the Top Pros and Cons of Adopting Patient Portals?Pro: Better communication with chronically ill patients.Con: Healthcare data security concerns.Pro: More complete and accurate patient information.Con: Difficult patient buy-in.Pro: Increased patient ownership of their own care.

Do doctors like patient portals?

The findings, published in the journal Health Affairs, indicate a lack of physician, health system and insurer engagement in promoting portal use—nearly 40% of patients in the study reported not being offered it.

What is a portal appointment?

Direct scheduling based in the patient portal has long been viewed as a strategy to improve patient access to care in a convenient way. The technology is available 24 hours per day, and lets patients bypass a call center that could tie them up for a prolonged period.

Are patient portals easy to use?

Portals provide physicians with a fast and easy way to communicate with chronically ill patients. They are a place to get complete and more accurate patient information. Portals empower patients to take ownership of their own healthcare, so they remain aware of the entire care process.

What is a patient portal?

Patient portals are healthcare -related online applications that allow patients to interact and communicate with their healthcare providers, such as physicians and hospitals . Typically, portal services are available on the Internet at all hours of the day and night. Some patient portal applications exist as stand-alone web sites ...

How do patient portals benefit patients?

Patient portals benefit both patients and providers by increasing efficiency and productivity. Patient portals are also regarded as a key tool to help physicians meet "meaningful use" requirements in order to receive federal incentive checks, especially for providing health information to patients.

What is HIPAA regulation?

Health care providers in the US are bound to comply with HIPAA regulations. These regulations specify what patient information must be held in confidence. Something as seemingly trivial as a name is viewed by HIPAA as protected health information.

What are the shortcomings of a patient portal?

The major shortcoming of most patient portals is their linkage to a single health organization. If a patient uses more than one organization for healthcare, the patient normally needs to log on to each organization's portal to access information. This results in a fragmented view of individual patient data.

What vendors offer patient portals?

Some vendors, such as athenahealth, Epic Systems and Cerner offer patient portals as one module of a complete Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. Other vendors, such as Allscripts and Medfusion, offer patient portals that can be integrated with any EHR.

What is e-visit?

E-visits (remote use of medical services) may soon become one of the most commonly used options of patient portals. The most likely demographic for uptake of e-visits are patients who live in remote rural areas, far from clinical services.

Where is personal health information stored?

In 2012, 57 percent of providers already had a patient portal in place. At present, individual health data are located primarily on paper in physicians' files. Patient portals have been developed to give patients better access to their information. Given the patient mobility and the development of clear interoperable standards, the best documentation of patient medical history may involve data stored outside physician offices.

Overview

Patient portals improve the way in which patients and health care providers interact. A product of meaningful use requirements, they were mandated as a way to provide patients with timely access to their health care. Specifically, patient portals give patients access to their health information to take a more active role.

Primary Benefits

No matter the type of platform you choose, your patient portal can provide your patients with secure online access to their medical details and increase their engagement with your practice. And not to mention that it does so while providing several benefits for health care providers as well. Some of these benefits include:

Notable Challenges

While many people have used a patient portal by now, they have mixed reviews at best. As you can see in the section above, there are plenty of benefits that patient portals provide. But unfortunately, their potential has yet to be fully harnessed.

Emerging Trends

If patient portals are a mixed bag, why should the patient portal receive greater consideration in the EHR, EMR and practice management selection processes? Because when you look at current industry trends, patient portals are well on their way to improving. Some of these trends include:

How to Use a Patient Portal

With patient portals, the first and foremost thing you will need is a computer and a working internet connection. Create a customized user’s account in the software to avail medical services on your own. Once you enter the patient portal, click on links and products sold by the provider and tap into a new experience.

Solution Evaluation

Now that you know what a patient portal is and given the potential and growing importance, how should you evaluate the best portal for your practice or facility? You can select a standalone patient portal that a third-party vendor commonly hosts through the cloud as a health care provider.

Final Thoughts

It’s clear that using a patient portal software can provide several benefits for your medical practice. After accounting for these nine considerations, you should be ready to start using a patient portal. The only decision left to make is which platform you’ll use.

What is a patient portal?

A patient portal is an application that allows patients to have access to parts of their medical records from their primary care doctor, specialists, or other Healthcare organizations. Patients log into patient portals from either a PC, a tablet, or a smartphone. The market for patient portals in the US is expected to reach over $2 Billion by 2020, up from about $279 million in 2012. (Source) Here are some functions and benefits of patient portals:

How many patients use the patient portal?

The data is from 2017 and reports that 52% of patients in the US had been offered access to their medical information by a physician or insurer. Of that 52%, a little over half of patients actually used the patient portal at least once in the year. That leaves us with a large part of the population that either aren’t utilizing a patient portal or are not being offered access.

How long does it take for EHR to provide timely access to patient information?

Measure 1: More than 50 percent of all unique patients seen by eligible providers during the EHR reporting period are provided timely (available to the patient within 4 business days after the information is available to the provider) online access to their health information.

What are the advantages of a vendor-dependent portal?

1) Clinics who can’t afford or don’t want to pay for a vendor-dependent portal can still get the functionality they need, 2) Patients who seek care from multiple providers can aggregate their health data into one portal.

What is portal in EHR?

In the EHR model, the portal is an extension of a vendor’s core electronic health record system. A Healthcare organization will usually launch the portal at the same time or shortly after the activation of the core EHR. Most of the data that patients see when they log into the portal is only from that organization’s system.

What are the disadvantages of patient portals?

As with any written communication, portal messages can be misinterpreted. When patients have more access to the same lab results as providers, they can worry over ranges that may be label as ‘high’ but are not really a problem. Security risks.

What happens if you share portal access?

If portal access is shared between spouses involved in divorce or domestic conflict, patient information could be accessed or used improperly

Why add resources to patient portal?

Adding these types of resources to the patient portal also helps drive the patient to use the portal and may help improve outcomes.

What is the Moffitt Cancer Center portal?

The Moffitt Cancer Center created an online patient portal called MyMoffitt Patient Portal to improve patient care and experience.

What is domain in health care?

A domain in an electronic health record that allows patients to access their records or communicate with their health care providers.

What can patients do with InnovaTV?

Used in conjunction with HCI's InnovaTV Patient Portal, patients can gain access to surveys, gift shop, and food ordering.

What is a patient portal?

A patient portal is a secure website that allows patients to access their health information and, in many cases, connect with their physician.

What does it mean to enroll in a course?

Enrolling in a course lets you earn progress by passing quizzes and exams.

Getting Patients to Opt-In

It’s a disadvantage of both the provider and patient when clients decide not to use a patient portal. Patients are missing out on the potential benefits available to them. Providers also need to spend more time going over information with the patient that they could just access on the portal.

Security Concerns

The AMA also says that security concerns are the reason why 22% of people aren’t taking advantage of these services. These concerns were more common in patients over 40 years old.

User Confusion and Anxiety

There’s always the risk of confusion when using a new online platform. Trying to learn all the functionalities can take some time. This is why some accounts offer new user tours to guide the person through all of the features.

Alienation and Health Disparities

Other disadvantages of patient portals include alienation and health disparities. Alienation between patient and provider occurs for those who don’t access these tools. Sometimes, this is due to health disparities if a person doesn’t have a method for using them.

Extra Work for the Provider

With each of the disadvantages of patient portals that I already mentioned comes unintended extra work for the provider. Doctors want their clients to use this service they offer but opt-in rates are still low among patients.

Conclusion

Patient portals are set up to be a benefit for clients. When people opt-in to using these services, they can use quick on-demand features to make their health experience better. For instance, it’s easier to obtain medical records, immunizations, prescription information, and other details.

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Overview

Patient portals are healthcare-related online applications that allow patients to interact and communicate with their healthcare providers, such as physicians and hospitals. Typically, portal services are available on the Internet at all hours of the day and night. Some patient portal applications exist as stand-alone web sites and sell their services to healthcare providers. Other portal applications are integrated into the existing web site of a healthcare provider. Still others …

Features and benefits

The central feature that makes any system a patient portal is the ability to expose individual patient health information in a secure manner through the Internet. In addition, virtually all patient portals allow patients to interact in some way with health care providers. Patient portals benefit both patients and providers by increasing efficiency and productivity. Patient portals are also regarded as a key tool to help physicians meet "meaningful use" requirements in order to receiv…

Disadvantages

The major shortcoming of most patient portals is their linkage to a single health organization. If a patient uses more than one organization for healthcare, the patient normally needs to log on to each organization's portal to access information. This results in a fragmented view of individual patient data.

Practice portals

Portal applications for individual practices typically exist in tandem with patient portals, allowing access to patient information and records, as well as schedules, payments, and messages from patients. Most patient portals require the practice to have some type of electronic medical record or patient management system, as the patient data needs to be stored in a data repository then retrieved by the patient portal. While lauding its ease-of-use, some physicians note that it is har…

Security

Health care providers in the US are bound to comply with HIPAA regulations. These regulations specify what patient information must be held in confidence. Something as seemingly trivial as a name is viewed by HIPAA as protected health information. For this reason, security has always been a top concern for the industry when dealing with the adoption of patient portals. While there may be systems that are not HIPAA compliant, certainly most patient and practice portals are se…

History

Internet portal technology has been in common use since the 1990s. The financial industry has been particularly adept at using the Internet to grant individual users access to personal information. Possibly because of the strictness of HIPAA regulations, or the lack of financial incentives for the health care providers, the adoption of patient portals has lagged behind other market segments.

Future

E-visits (remote use of medical services) may soon become one of the most commonly used options of patient portals. The most likely demographic for uptake of e-visits are patients who live in remote rural areas, far from clinical services. An Internet session would be much cheaper and more convenient than traveling a long distance, especially for simple questions or minor medical complaints.

Vendors

Some vendors, such as athenahealth, Epic Systems and Cerner offer patient portals as one module of a complete Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. Other vendors, such as Allscripts and Medfusion, offer patient portals that can be integrated with any EHR.
Recent market surveys have highlighted best of breed, or applications that excel at one or two functions, are losing ground to portals provided by large vendors. While best of breed portals ar…

Overview

  • Patient portals improve the way in which patients and health care providers interact. A product of meaningful userequirements, they were mandated as a way to provide patients with timely access to their health care. Specifically, patient portals give patients access to their health information to take a more active role. There are two main types of...
See more on selecthub.com

Primary Benefits

  • No matter the type of platform you choose, your patient portal can provide your patients with secure online access to their medical details and increase their engagement with your practice. And not to mention that it does so while providing several benefits for health care providers as well. Some of these benefits include:
See more on selecthub.com

Notable Challenges

  • While many people have used a patient portal by now, they have mixed reviews at best. As you can see in the section above, there are plenty of benefits that patient portals provide. But unfortunately, their potential has yet to be fully harnessed. Some patient portals are hard to access, poorly designed, cumbersome to navigate and limited in utility. These downfalls make it …
See more on selecthub.com

Emerging Trends

  • If patient portals are a mixed bag, why should the patient portal receive greater consideration in the EHR, EMR and practice management selection processes? Because when you look at current health care technology trends, patient portals are well on their way to improving. Some of these trends include:
See more on selecthub.com

How to Use A Patient Portal

  • With patient portals, the first and foremost thing you will need is a computer and a working internet connection. Create a customized user’s account in the software to avail medical services on your own. Once you enter the patient portal, click on links and products sold by the provider and tap into a new experience. Set up the portal according to your needs and receive messages, …
See more on selecthub.com

Solution Evaluation

  • Now that you know what a patient portal is and given the potential and growing importance, how should you evaluate the best portal for your practice or facility? You can select a standalone patient portal that a third-party vendor commonly hosts through the cloud as a health care provider. This approach can result in incompatibility issues with your EMR and/or EHR system, r…
See more on selecthub.com

Final Thoughts

  • It’s clear that using patient portal software can provide several benefits for your medical practice. After accounting for these considerations, you should be ready to start using a patient portal. The only decision left to make is which platform you’ll use. Consider taking a look at our Top Medical Software Comparison or build your own requirements checklistto give yourself an idea of what t…
See more on selecthub.com