How happy are your current patients with your medical practice? Are you doing everything in your power to make them feel at ease, respected, and listened to? What is the waiting room experience like?
The answers to these questions can help determine the future success of your practice. When patients are comfortable and pleased with how the staff treats them (and this includes the amount of forms the staffers make them fill out), they will be more inclined to stay on with you, as well as recommend your services to their friends, family, and neighbors.
With that in mind, you should know that many medical organizations have come to find that using patient portals is an excellent way to please and even delight their patients. A patient portal is a computerized, online system that works with your electronic health record software to let patients provide information to the staff, as well as make inquiries and get access to vital data they are waiting for, such as their latest lab test results.
Let Patients Provide Their Information Quickly and Easily
Your new patients won’t have to spend nearly as much time filling out forms in the waiting room when you implement a patient portal for them to use. In some cases, they will even be able to fill out all the preliminary information from the comfort of their home using a computer connected to the Internet.
The information will then be used by your staff for charting and billing purposes. Since the patients didn’t have to provide the same information multiple times as is typically the case with paper intake forms, the process will go faster. Your staff will be freed of the burden of putting in the same details over and over, enabling them to devote more of their time and attention to actual patient care.
Personalized Reminders
Did you know that a patient portal is an excellent tool for providing timely reminders to patients? You can send them a note about their next appointment via a convenient text message or email, depending on their preferences.
You can easily have members of your staff record reminders in their own voices and let the system call patients to leave them a message that sounds familiar to them. Many medical practices also find it convenient to use a portal in this way to remind patients about upcoming vaccinations or to alert them about allergy season.
Easier Prescription Refills
Your patients need only to log in to the patient portal when they need a prescription to be reauthorized or refilled. This will save them time since they can do it whenever they want.
Get Test Results Now
Patients dislike having to wait for their test results, such as the latest routine blood test from the lab as you keep tabs on their condition. Now, with a patient portal, they can access these results at a moment’s notice instead of waiting for a member of your staff to print it out and send it via surface mail to their home.
Once you’ve seen a patient portal in action and just how easy it makes things for both your staff members and the patients themselves, you’ll be wondering why you waited so long to implement one at your busy practice. Your staff will appreciate how they can do their jobs more effectively, and your patients should be delighted at the laborsaving tool you have provided them.
Key Takeaway
- Patient portals are an excellent way to delight your patients and free up your staff for more pressing work.
- You can send out customized, personalized reminders to your patients using text messages, email, or even voice mail using the voice of your own staff.
- Patients enjoy the fact that a patient portal lets them submit all their information when they first come to your practice.
- Implementing a patient portal means that patients won’t have to wait on the phone to leave messages for your staff when they have a routine or pressing matter that needs attention.
- Being able to check on your lab test results or order a refill of a prescription is much easier when you do it through a patient portal.
