With every secure message, a convenient form of communication is achieved between patients, office staffers and providers.
Patient portals are becoming commonplace for many hospitals and medical offices as they not only enhances a patient’s experience with the office, but saves time for staffers by improving work flow.
Patients have the ability to create appointments online, fill out forms prior to coming in office, verify current contact information and review medical records. With patients filling out most of the necessary information at their leisure, front desk workers have fewer phone calls and forms to juggle.
Since the beginning days of patient portals, a lot has changed. Today, creating appointments is not restricted to just current patients, but prospective patients can also request available time slots to be seen by a provider. Accounts can also be linked through portal for patients to coordinate appointment times, such as parents creating a time for children. A patient even has the option to cancel and reschedule an appointment.
With portal, users can create and adjust appointments with ease and on their own time, phone lines free up and enable staff to better interact with the patients in front of them.
It could be as simple as a notification of a new phone number or a more in-depth question about whether or not a pain reliever can be taken with current medication.
Patients that have questions, concerns or just want to update personal information at any time can easily do so. And with secure, HIPAA compliant messaging, all communication can be easily organized and answered. Messages are delivered directly into your electronic health record (EHR) software and navigation is as easy to use as any other email service.
Staff and providers can easily decided if questions or comments warrant a simple reply or if a phone call needs to be made and an appointment time established.
Depending on the reason for a visit, a patient may have to fill out quite a few forms before being seen, such as consent, family history or even insurance. By putting forms online, a patient can fill out information whenever it is most convenient, and that information is saved directly into the patient’s file. This alleviates staff from having to ready and file dozens of paper forms everyday, efficiently changing the focus to better care for the patient.
Interested in learning more about Patient Portal? Call (877) 220-8418 to learn how to add Patient Portal to your MacPractice!
