How to convince patients to use your patient portal [10 Tips working right now]

So you have just launched a wonderful patient portal for your patients, great. Now it becomes easy for you to achieve meaningful use criteria. No it isn’t that simple as it looks. The biggest challenge is convincing your patients to use your portal.

You want almost all of your patients to use your portal. But why are they not interested even if your portal has all the benefits. A survey conducted by Technology Advice, received response from 430 individuals who visited their primary care physicians within the last year. The 3 main outcomes regarding web-based patient portals :

• 40% of patients have no idea of patient portal benefits
• 49% said their doctors have portals
• 11% said their doctors don’t offer portals

Majority of respondents preferred a phone call conversation with their provider, according to this poll.

So how can you overcome the challenges to get your patients to first sign up for your portal?

Here are 10 tips working right now to convince your patients to sign up and actively use your patient portal!

  1. Introduce the technology in person!

Appoint a dedicated staff member to explain how your patients can use portal to review lab, email non urgent messages, schedule appointments and print lab reports for specialists

A better approach would be to use a point-of-service platform (a handheld technology) at the time patients check in for appointments and set  a username and password for their portals before they leave .

  2 . Avoid using a troublesome portal?

Most of the practices are attracted towards portals, which look promising with both wide range of services and pricing in the beginning but later confuses both the staff and patients

The best way would be to choose a portal which works on your specific needs. Is your registration process streamlined? Have you turned on all the functions? If you haven’t then you must be doing it to help patients utilize it to the fullest. Make sure that physicians and other staff are active in replying to patient requirements within the portal.

   3. Commit to using technology!

The modern portal technology is challenging for the doctors who are not tech-savvy, as it’s tough for them to share patient records at the time-frame required. Thus it gets difficult for the patients to get timely access of their lab results, blood tests and other patient information, if it takes more time in uploading the results.

“I had to have the hospital staff print me off the lab work daily” says Katie Franklin, who was in a hospital with her husband, because it took too long for her to view it in the portal.  A more efficient and streamlined approach would be to integrate the portal with the practices EMR.  So the patient records will be automatically updated at the same time the results are uploaded in the EMR.

4. At every conversation promote your portal!

To promote the patient portal, look at every patient conversation as an opportunity. Your receptionist can inform the patient that next time they can schedule appointments online when the first time patient calls in to schedule an appointment and also they will get appointment notifications through email. Have your staff inform the patients they can pay bills online before they check out. Your duty is to inform the patient that they will be able to view lab reports, diagnosis summary, and other patient data related to your practice through portal, before you leave the exam room.

5. Speak to your patients about benefits!

It’s nice that you are letting your patients know about all the features of the portal. But is that correct way to promote your portal? Whenever you talk to your patients about portal, sell them the benefits not the features.  What do you think is better? Telling your patients that they can make appointments online instead of phone call, download immunization records, share their medical history with other doctors and send urgent messages when the office is closed OR telling them that the portal comes with appointment reminder and secure messaging.

6. Do you email your patients about the registration process OR updated information?

Getting your patients to sign up for your service is the most challenging task. Add the link to your portal in the appointment confirmation email.  There are good chances to drive patient engagement in your portal.  Accepting and working on a patient portal is not an easy project you know, so if you are updating and any new feature or design to make it more easy to use then don’t forget to promote it to your patients. It motivates the patient with your update design news, who was first frustrated by the bugs in your portal.

7. Avoid using office email!

One of the challenges is the use of email communication. Most patients are used to office emails to address concerns at their preferred time. It could be challenging to limit them to the use portal for physician-patient interaction.  You have explained them the benefits and your portal looks easy to use but what if you still see them using emails? Should you apply a new idea?

Try the always successful discount offer scheme. Tell them that they will get a 6% discount for the first time they pay bills through your portal OR run a monthly reward system. There is a very good chance that they will pass the sign up step, the first and the most challenging task for practices. This will encounter the fear of technology once they use any feature and they will believe the benefits you been talking about.

8. Older patients are the most engaged!

Most practices assume that older patients are not tech -savvy and won’t be least interested in adopting patient portal. It is the biggest mistake by assuming this. According to a study older patients are most likely to engage in patient portal. This indicates that older patients with chronic care are more interested in using patient portal.

9. Mobile Technology and Digital Marketing!

Do you think by offering portal that can be accessed via web would do the job? Limiting your portal to a single format would decrease the adoption rate as many people are moving to digital devices. Nice, your practice website has a link to the portal but is your website and portal mobile friendly? Does your portal have an App component to retrieve information on the move?

10. Always remember!

So it has been a year since you launched your portal? Do you still need to advertise? Yes , even if you are like, it’s going to be there with me all the way, your patients need time to accept a new technology and get used to it. You don’t have to spam their mails by sending promotional messages. Keep reminding them at every interaction. Avoid using questions like Did you know we have a portal? Instead you can ask Are you using the portal? OR Are you there on the portal? This can be also used for patients who rarely visit your office.  Don’t stop unless you see the number you aimed for.

Take Away: Patient Awareness is the real secret to getting your patients to use your portal. All they need to know is you have a portal, how easily they can use it, what are the benefits they get and you get a tremendous increase in patient engagement.