How To Entice Patients To Use Portals
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
A recent survey reveals what patients want – and what’s wrong with – patient portals.
Patient portals have been found to be one of the key solutions to the ever-present patient engagement problem. Unfortunately, discussion around what exactly attracts patients to using the portals has been sparse.
Software Advice, an EHR systems research firm, surveyed a random sample of 1,540 patients in the U.S. in order to determine what features they wanted in a portal. At least 385 responses to each question posed were collected.
Key Findings
- Just one-third of patients surveyed currently have access to a portal. The remainder either does not or is unsure.
- Appointment scheduling was the most requested portal feature.
- The top sources of frustration? Unresponsive staff (34 percent) and interface issues (33 percent).
Access
The low number of respondents who indicated they do currently have access to a patient portal indicates many providers will be taking on the task of walking their patients through the new experience of interacting with a portal. It also reflects findings that providers have been proactive in neither adopting the use of patient portals, nor in promoting them to their patients.
The provider communication issue is also supported by the fact that 33 percent of the patients surveyed weren’t aware whether they had access to their doctor’s existing portal.
Most Valuable Feature
Patients indicated they wanted a number of different features, but the top three, composing almost 70 percent of the answers were:
- appointment scheduling
- viewing test and lab results
- viewing bills and making payments
Online scheduling systems hold benefits for both provider and patient. Automatic appointment reminders, for example, can help significantly cut no-show rates. Lab test viewing brings similar benefits to providers, as demonstrated by the case of Kaiser Permanente — when they implemented a results viewing option in their portal, registration increased three fold from nine to 27 percent.
Patient Pain Points
The top two complaints patients had around portal features were unresponsive staff and confusing interfaces.
The issue with unresponsive staff is very likely connected to the fast adoption rates of EMR systems, and figuring out how to balance communication through these systems with already demanding schedules. This, combined with interfaces that confuse both patients and staff, are very likely slowing down patient adoption rates.
Going Deeper
For more details from the survey, including requested features broken down by both gender and age, please visit the survey results page at Software Advice’s website. For a deeper look at the implementation, benefits, and safety concerns around patient portals, we recommend the following articles specifically for health IT professionals: