Patient portals: features, integrations & benefits
February 13, 2024
Patient portals are secure websites that allow patients to access their personal health records and test results, receive reminders about upcoming appointments, contact their care provider, pay bills, and obtain prescriptions remotely and at any time.
Itransition helps healthcare organizations add patient portals to their patient engagement toolset by providing custom-made solutions or implementing platform-based portals tailored to the particular organization’s specifics.
Patient portals statistics
of EHR executives in the US report that patients engage well with their company's patient portal
Statista, 2022
individuals nationwide reported they accessed their online medical records or patient portal
ONC, 2022
Key patient portal solutions capabilities
Patient portals include a range of essential features that support each step of a patient’s medical journey.
Patient access to medical records
Authorized patients can access their medical history, including health examination summaries, lab results, interactions with medical professionals, self-recorded symptoms, wearables, and medical device data stored in the organization’s database.
Communication
Patients or their family members with an internet connection can reach out to the care team in real-time without going to the doctor’s office to consult about non-urgent issues or clarify healthcare-related questions.
Patient self-service
Patients or their representatives can schedule appointments and online consultations, request prescriptions and referrals, order prescription refills, receive appointment reminders, reach out to customer support, enter their health data, and sign up for a clinical trial program.
Education
A patient portal can serve as an educational hub to promote a healthy lifestyle, help patients better understand their conditions, lab test results, and prescribed treatment, and alert them of potential health risks.
Feedback aggregation
Patients and their representatives can complete forms in patient portals to evaluate the quality of the medical practices’ patient care and customer services, user experience with healthcare organizations’ apps, and other metrics.
Insurance & payment management
With the help of payment system integration, patients can view and manage their insurance claims and make online payments for each medical event.
Patient portal types
Depending on the type of data that can be accessed through the portal, this software can be categorized into one of three types:
Open portals
allow patients to register and access information freely without requiring their account activation by a healthcare provider. These portals usually contain basic features that allow patients to schedule appointments, look up answers to frequently asked questions, and check the vaccination calendar.
Closed portals
require healthcare providers to validate and approve patients’ accounts before they can access the portal. This approach adds to the security of the patient portal and protects sensitive information, such as the patient’s entire medical history.
Hybrid portals
combine aspects of both open and closed portals: basic information and functionality, like appointment scheduling or bill payments, is available to anyone, while access to detailed medical records requires the provider’s approval.
Our services
We provide a full cycle of patient portal development and implementation services for healthcare organizations that want to improve patient experience.
Consulting
Our consultants help medical organizations to successfully expand their patient engagement ecosystem by advising on a suitable patient portal solution and assisting with its implementation.
Software development & implementation
According to your organization’s requirements, we can develop a custom online patient portal or implement a platform-based solution applying modern cybersecurity principles to ensure patient data safety.
Integration
We help healthcare organizations improve the interoperability of their health IT ecosystems by integrating patient portals with other healthcare and administrative software, third-party tools, mobile apps, and medical devices.
Legacy portal update
Our team can assess the effectiveness of your current patient portal software against your present-day requirements and add new modules, integrate it with other solutions, or redesign its architecture to boost its efficiency.
Support & maintenance
We help healthcare companies keep their patient portals fully operable, secure, and cost-effective by providing L1-L3 support services, healthcare systems’ performance monitoring, and on-demand upgrades and patch installation.
Looking for a patient portal to improve your care delivery?
Valuable patient portal integrations
Patient portal systems become more convenient and useful for patients if they are integrated with other healthcare software instead of being standalone solutions.
Patient portals
EMR/EHR systems
Telemedicine
Medical device software
Healthcare CRM
Healthcare analytics
Mobile health apps
Practice management software
We automate the exchange of personal health records between your EMR/EHR software and a web-based portal to streamline personal data management and avoid duplications and data-related mistakes.
Itransition helps healthcare providers conveniently conduct medical consultations in an audio or video format or through secure messaging via a patient portal, guaranteeing the confidentiality of medical information and the high quality of remote primary care services.
We enable easy access to medical information coming from diagnostic, treatment, and remote patient monitoring devices to help patients better understand their conditions and receive notifications about new results or dangerous changes.
Itransition facilitates smooth integration between CRMs and patient portals to connect marketing, sales, and customer support teams and provide more personalized healthcare service offers to patients.
We deliver integrated patient portals that securely transfer data to medical analytics solutions, enabling faster and more accurate decision-making that improves health outcomes.
Our development team delivers native and cross-platform patient portal applications for mobile devices to allow patients to access portal features on the go.
Practice management software
We connect patient portals to practice management solutions, allowing large healthcare institutions and private practices to streamline the distribution and tracking of administrative tasks, improving care coordination.
Benefits of patient portals
Accessible personal health information
- Stricter treatment adherence
- Better recovery
- Lower readmission rates
Condition monitoring
- Adverse event prevention
- Fewer complications
Health education
- Fewer hospitalizations
- Healthier habits
- Higher life expectancy
Preventive care awareness
- More regular checkups and screenings
- Timely immunizations
- Better quality of life
Access to 360-degree patient information
- Advancements in clinical decision-making
Real-time communication tools
- More available and timely care
- Better trust-based relationships with patients
- Fewer office visits
- Lower risks of complications
Simplified multi-specialization professional interaction
- Easier opinion exchange
- Better treatment plans
- Professional upskilling
Remote cross-platform access
- Better workplace flexibility
- Timely access to critical updates
Patient-facing tasks automation
- More patient-focused care
- Faster task completion
- Freed human resources
- Lower risks of staff burnout
Patient engagement
- Fewer readmissions and complications
- Higher patient satisfaction
- Improved patient loyalty
- Higher organization credibility
Challenges with custom patient portal adoption
Qualitative research published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) revealed that the patient portal adoption process is complex for most healthcare organizations. We use our extensive experience in the healthcare IT industry to avoid common implementation challenges.
Many healthcare professionals consider that working with a patient portal complicates their daily workflows instead of simplifying them.
Our team can automate routine workflows and manual tasks by automatically acquiring and processing patient data from the portal via standardized elements like pre-filled visit notes’ templates or standard questionnaires distributed to new patients. This way, clinicians don’t have to gather that much data manually and have more time to connect with patients.
Some healthcare organizations spend a lot of money updating or modifying the solution to meet their changing needs or improve its usability.
Itransition’s custom cloud-based solutions are designed to handle growing traffic volumes and expanding patient bases. They are also easy to upgrade in case additional functionality or integrations are needed. Moreover, our patient portal app development is device- and OS-agnostic by design to ensure apps’ scalability and increase user adoption rates.
Some portal solutions lack performance analytics features essential for patient engagement strategy planning.
We equip your solution with built-in tracking and analytic tools so that you can determine its value to your organization in terms of patient engagement, cost reduction through optimization, and return on investment.
Patients and care providers consider portals vulnerable to hacker attacks and worry about PHI security breaches.
We develop patient portals that align with the healthcare industry’s security and quality regulations. For example, when implementing a patient portal solution for clients based in the USA, our team ensures the portals’ HIPAA compliance and adherence to The National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) office’s essential guidelines on healthcare application development, implementation, and usage.
Ensure your portal’s success with a reliable partner
Patient portals are central patient engagement tools for middle to large-sized healthcare organizations, so it is essential to choose the platform that meets the needs of both personnel and patients and implement it properly into your healthcare ecosystem. Our experts will apply their extensive experience in healthcare software implementation to ensure your patient portal solution integrates flawlessly with your health IT ecosystem and is easy to use, stable, and secure.
Need a reliable patient portal implementation partner?
FAQ
What are the most popular patient portals?
According to the 2023 KLAS Best in KLAS Patient Portals report, the top five most popular patient portals are:
- MyChart by Epic Systems
- AthenaCommunicator by athenahealth
- Greenway Patient Portal by Greenway Health
- FollowMyHealth by Veradigm
- Medfusion Patient Portal by NextGen Healthcare
Who uses patient portals?
Patients, their representatives and caregivers, healthcare professionals, payers, and insurers can use patient portals in one way or another.
Does a patient portal store electronic health records?
Standalone patient portals contain personal health records, usually maintained by the patient, and don't include the patient's entire health history, e.g., all medical interventions and patient outcomes throughout life. However, portals integrated with the EHR can be used to access a patient's entire health history.
How do I know if my patient portal needs an update?
Consider revamping your solution if:
- There are no tools to track and measure portal performance
- The portal lags or crashes when handling heavy traffic
- The portal lacks suitable data security controls (e.g., user authentication)
- The solution lacks crucial patient portal features like appointment scheduling tools or access to patient health information
- The portal doesn’t comply with the regulations (if your portal’s users live in the US, the portal should be HIPAA-compliant; if the users are in Europe, the portal should comply with GDPR, and so on)
- There is no data synchronization between the portal and other medical software in use
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