Implement a Patient Portal

Genesis Experiences Success Implementing Geonetric’s Patient Portal

Impacting Lives through Technology

At a time when patients are demanding the ability to interact online with hospitals, Genesis Health System, headquartered in Davenport, IA, is raising the bar for online personalized health experiences.

The health system understands that offering patients access to a patient portal with advanced transactional features builds stronger relationships and improves internal efficiencies. Genesis turned to Geonetric to design and implement its patient portal – and has experienced immediate success.

Building a Portal Patients will Use

An early mover in the portal space, Genesis developed an EMR-based portal in 2004 and had limited success – over a five year period the portal only had 988 total registered users. Then in 2009, Genesis and Geonetric unveiled a portal built on VitalSite® with the end-users’ needs in mind. Genesis’ portal now provides a seamless experience for site visitors as they navigate between the website and the portal, and health consumers can use the portal without being a patient first, increasing patient acquisition.

Genesis site visitors can log into “My Genesis” to:

• Create forms for themselves or family members, save, and return later to submit them 
• Ask questions to administrators about billing, pre-registration and other routine inquiries through a secure, HIPAA-compliant inbox
• Sign-up for customized eNewsletters through Private Health News integration
• Submit forms for their entire family

Seeing Value and Setting the Stage for Integration

Within the first three months of launching “My Genesis,” Genesis’ patients and potential patients created 1,261 new portal accounts, and more than 400 of those registrants logged in more than once. Since then, the number of new portal accounts has grown to over 31,000.

Process efficiencies are beginning to result in real, tangible value. Within the first six months, 300 online pre-registration forms were submitted through “My Genesis” resulting in: 

• 50 percent reduction in staff time required to process pre-registration forms
• 80 percent reduction in callbacks from Genesis administrators to follow-up on illegible data
• 50 percent reduction for incomplete pre-registration forms that would have otherwise required a follow-up call

The transaction volume has also been impressive. Since launching online bill payment, 86,101 payments have been made by Genesis’ patients, totaling $12.3 million. Assuming a three dollar transaction cost savings*, Genesis has saved more than $258,000 in transaction fees.

And this is just the beginning. With Genesis experiencing so much success from its current patient portal, it’s laying the framework to add advanced transactional features, such as health diaries and real-time appointment scheduling, and integrate with electronic medical records to present clinical data to patients.

* According to a study by Gartner, processing a payment by check costs $5.00 on average versus an average of $2.00 for online bill payment