eHealth Articles & White Papers

Patient Portals: Adding the Personal Touch to Healthcare

Kristen Everett - Data Analyst

It seems the future of healthcare is being pushed into the Personal Health Record (PHR)/Patient Portal realm fairly quickly, and why shouldn't it be? Individuals today want to take an active role in their healthcare and PHRs and patient portals allow them to do so.

So, what is a patient portal? According to Wikipedia, patient portals are healthcare-related online applications that allow patients to interact and communicate with their healthcare providers, such as physicians and hospitals. Access to the patient portal is granted with a login to comply with HIPAA regulations. In the healthcare industry the definition of a patient portal will evolve, as initiatives grow and become more important to the organizations involved.

A patient portal should allow patients to actively monitor their health and the health of their families. Some software companies refer to patient portals as a public website...but here at Geonetric, they are much more. Patient portals should carry quite a bit of functionality with the goal of benefiting patients by making their interactions with your organization easier and more personal.

You should be able to log in and request prescription refills, receive prescriptions, track your child's immunizations, schedule appointments, sign up for classes/events, correspond with your doctor via secure messaging, have an online doctor's visits, etc. In essence, a patient portal should be your one-stop shop for all your healthcare needs and questions.

Putting it in perspective

After analyzing the data from Geonetric's 2008 Study on Initiatives in eHealth it becomes quite clear that the definition of a patient portal varies within the industry. A portion of the respondents indicated that they have a patient portal, so we inquired further about the functionality contained in their portals.

For starters, we learned that when many think of a patient portal they conjure up any section of the website that is personalized and may require a login. In fact, 19 percent of respondents indicated they didn't have a login for their portal and weren't planning on having one within the next six months.

We evaluated different types of portal functionality by offering a list of 23 possible functional aspects. Here are the top five aspects that organizations indicated they currently have in place:

Leaders or early adopters of the patient portal initiative seem to be on track with their applications which widely include a portal login and appointment requests. The percentage of "non-leader" organizations that have a portal is significantly less.

To further evaluate future direction, we looked at a projected functionality list, which includes the functionality already in place and planned for the next six months. We discovered that patient portal development is moving toward direct contact with the patient. Along with a PHR, consumers will be able to pay medical bills online and post and receive secure messages with a doctor or nurse. Portal Functionality - Projected

Respondents were also asked if they had PHRs (patient or provider populated) on their website/patient portal.

• 29 percent are projected to have a patient populated PHR in place
• 23 percent are projected to have a provider populated PHR in place

Interestingly, many organizations plan to add bill presentation to coincide with their online bill payment and pre-registration. Both of these functionalities save time for the organization. Also, a number of organizations plan to add classes/events and appointment scheduling and reminders to their portals, thus making it easier for patients to use the portal effectively.

Next year we expect to see more of the personal touches added, tying in health risk assessments, family tracking, disease tracking, and more robust PHRs. These will become a point of reference for patients, helping them manage their care, and initiate contact with the organization, which is the main goal.

Taking an active role in managing healthcare

We are excited to see these changes unfolding in the healthcare industry. I look forward to the day when I can keep all of my health information in one spot with access to the hospital's services - everything in one spot, controlled by me, on my time frame, without picking up a phone.

The survey results reassure health consumers that want to take a more active role in managing their healthcare. They indicate a growing group of organizations are taking the patient portal initiative seriously, with more and more organizations jumping on the bandwagon.