15 Jul Pediatric Practice Benefits of Patient Portal Adoption
Having a fully functional patient portal is necessary for today’s healthcare environment. Parents of young children expect to have the world at their fingertips. This includes being able to access medical records on their phones and tablets.
But what are the advantages of a patient portal for pediatric practices? Here are 4 benefits we are already seeing after implementing our new portal.
Improved Communications and Documentation
A patient portal strengthens relationships between families and providers. Patients’ parents can communicate with your practice when it’s convenient for them, and you can respond when it’s conducive to your schedule. Parents can also update their children’s information, request records or refills, and send messages when they need to ask a question or speak to the doctor.
In addition, a patient portal is a secure way for your pediatric practice to share handouts, school forms, excuse notes, asthma plans, and more.
Time and Cost Effectiveness
Through a patient portal, families can perform tasks like updating their own records and schedule their own appointments. When it comes to completing surveys online, your team members do not have to copy, scan, and score paper copies. These are huge time-saving measures.
A fully functioning portal helps practices do more with fewer staff members. Not only does it save time, but it also saves money. We all know that payroll is our biggest expense. It’s more than rent, and it’s more than vaccines. You certainly do not have to let employees go, but you may be able to grow the practice without hiring someone new.
Increased Patient and Parent Satisfaction
Modern families love being able to view their child’s full health record, lab results, medication lists, immunization history, and upcoming appointments — all from an iPhone or Android smartphone or a computer.
And you might just see parents’ eyes light up when they learn they can schedule their own appointments via a patient portal. They love this feature and get very excited to have this ownership over their schedules.
Overall Efficiency for Your Practice
A patient portal helps you focus on what matters most, which is providing exceptional pediatric care. By taking full advantage of a patient portal’s innovations, you can boost the overall efficiency of your practice.
For example, when configuring a portal for your practice, think of it like creating a template in your EHR. You might have to spend some time writing a template. However, every time you use that template in the future, you are more efficient because the groundwork has already been done.
The same is true for your patient portal. If you tweak it in the beginning to fit your needs, it saves everyone time in the long run. That is a really attractive feature.
A Final Note About the Patient Portal Experience
As you move forward and prepare to implement a patient portal for your pediatric practice, always remember to think like a doctor in the trenches and consider the end user’s experience.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are parents going to be able to do this?
- Will they be able to follow these instructions?
- Will this be more work or less work for my staff?
- Is it going to reduce the workload?
I am very excited about our new patient portal. We are pushing very hard to get everyone in our practice registered on it. I think it is going to save us a TON of time in the very near future.
This was a guest blog provided by OP Community member Jeffrey Cooper, MD, owner of Cooper Pediatrics, located in Duluth, GA.