In the Internet age, virtually every business has a website. However, if you are a healthcare professional, you might not be getting the best out of your practice's website without a patient portal. If you want to cut down on wasted time, simplify patient intake, and help your patients feel cared for, you should consider adding a helpful patient portal to your website.

What Exactly Is A Patient Portal?

Patient portals are secure pages on your practice's website that allow your patients to give you their information prior to appointments and get in contact with you when necessary. The simplest patient portal resembles a basic secure email service that you and your patients can use. However, you can build your portal into an excellent health resource for your patients to improve the quality of their care.

For potential new patients looking for a good doctor, a patient portal provides an excellent means to ask you for more information about your practice. It also helps to facilitate sending automated notices to current patients, like office holidays and changes in practice policy.

How Can A Patient Portal Make Your Job Easier?

For starters, having your new patients enter in all of their health and personal information prior to your their first appointment allows you to have an instant view of a patient's condition before the two of you even meet. Being armed with your patient's information can not only cut down on time spent asking questions during your appointment, but also allow you to form a basic plan of treatment for his or her condition.

Signing up with your patient portal also allows your clients to receive automated bill payment reminders and appointment reminders. Relying on the system to handle reminders can save you time spent on the phone and money spent mailing out bill notices. By connecting your patient portal to a quality medical EHR program, you can even automatically import patient information to your practice computers, saving you even more time.

Patient portals also allow you to send important information to patients instantly, so you can notify them easily in advance if you choose to go on vacation or change their treatment plan.

Does A Patient Portal Give Patients A Better Experience?

Automatic reminders for appointments and bills not only make your job easier, but they help patients stay on track and avoid missing important dates. If your office charges a fee for a missed appointment, your patient portal could end up saving money for your clients with its reminders.

Both new and old patients appreciate being able to get in touch with you if anything happens to them or if they have questions about their care. Answering short patient questions through your website's patient portal helps people feel connected to you as a doctor and secure in their treatment with you. Once again, this feature of patient portals also helps you cut down on phone calls during business hours, giving you more time to see patients.

You can also provide helpful information in your patient portal, such as guides to home care for various injuries, or what to do in the event of an emergency. These helpful pages will make you seem more professional and knowledgeable to your patients, and may prompt them to seek treatment from you for different conditions or injuries in the future. Providing tips for noticing and preventing hidden diseases may also help your patients seek added treatment with you as well.

Patient portals can help reduce paperwork and phone calls, while also giving your patients a much-needed sense of security. If you want to be able to get in touch with your patients and provide them automatic reminders about critical information, there's no better solution for doctors today than a website patient portal.

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