Talking To Patients About Portals Increases Use

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Simply discussing the benefits of online portals with your patients at regular office visits can increase their use of the technology.

Talking to your patients about portals can actually increase their use according to a recent study published in The Annals of Family Medicine.

According to iHealth Beat, researchers analyzed more than 100,000 patients who had in-office visits along with the different strategies the practices used to encourage patients to use online portals. Promoting portals during office visits proved to be the most effective strategy to get patients to access their records and health information online. This was better than both mailing campaigns and advertising.

“While patient portals can help to engage patients in their care and even lead to improved health outcomes, getting patients online has been difficult,” said Alex Krist, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Population Health, VCU School of Medicine in an article for Health Data Management. “However, primary care practices can effectively encourage their patients to use a portal by making promotion of the portal part of routine care.”

About 26 percent of those patients who regularly visited the doctor’s office during the study created an account on the patient portal. Another 33 percent of patients, this time those who had visited in the last month, had a new or existing portal account. Twenty-three percent of portal users signed up on the day of their first visit.

The study concluded, “By directly engaging patients to use a portal and supporting practices to integrate use into care, primary care practices can match or potentially surpass the usage rates achieved by large health systems.”