How To Benefit From Healthcare Secure Messaging

Secure messaging via the patient portal has introduced a new frontier for patient-provider communication. What was conducted during in-person follow-up appointments early is now possible with digital technologies. As more clinicians adopt secure messaging capabilities, it is important to know how to succeed with this tool. Here is all about secure messaging and how patients & providers can benefits from it.

A recent healthcare study reveals that the increased and advanced method of training for both healthcare providers and patients can help healthcare secure messaging tool to be more beneficial in the industry.

Patients view About Secure Messaging

It is found that the patients are worried more about imposing on their physician’s time and not knowing the right time to use secure messaging for provider communication. Why does this happen? Unlike other features of a patient portal like appointment scheduling, viewing lab results, secure messaging allows for the exchange of direct communication between patients and providers. So here, the patient’s relationship with their physicians is the key predictor of the patient’s intention to use secure messaging.

Providers View About Secure Messaging

As the healthcare providers are more responsible for their practice growth, they will busy in the clinical workflow processes, delivering quality care for patients, taking care of the billing collections, and more. So they won’t wish to spend their valuable time on a single task. With healthcare secure messaging, the providers had three main concerns.

1. Insufficient information in the messages: The providers are not getting sufficient information about the patient’s personal information and their health data.

2. Inappropriate message topics: With secure messaging, providers feel that the patients are not discussing to the point (about what’s their actual problem).

3. Incorrect use of the secure messaging feature

How To Benefit From Secure Messaging?

The right solution to gain benefit from healthcare secure messaging is that the patients need to be taught about

• How to use the secure messaging feature?
• When to use the secure messaging feature?
• What is the right way to communicate via the portal?
• What’s the right time to use secure messaging & when to use call or schedule an appointment with their physicians.

Printed materials could also be presented to patients when they first start using a patient portal. Individuals can learn how to create an account and then properly navigate through the portal’s features, including the secure messaging feature. Providers will also benefit from more in-depth training on secure messaging and patient portals.

Additional training that exposes providers to the patient view of the portal may provide a more complete understanding of the patient experience and help them to better interact with their patients.

It will also be beneficial for providers to establish clear and consistent guidelines on patient portal expectations. Even patients who are experienced with patient portal usage may have difficulty understanding when secure messaging is appropriate and what time of information to put in a secure message.

While there is a range of technical solutions that could be implemented to improve patient and provider communication via secure messaging, it is important to elicit input from all stakeholders in designing these modifications.

RELATED: How To Choose The Best Patient Portal Software Features

Discussing with the patients how they feel about using secure messaging, what are the difficulties they are facing, and what are the things need to be improved for better usability, can help providers to refine their concerns and develop new ways to address them Both providers and patients need to have a strong understanding of secure messaging for the technology’s benefits to be fully realized.

Final Thoughts

Healthcare secure messaging results in a better patient-provider relationship by making patients feel more comfortable to ask questions and allowing providers to provide better health advice.

Even though the majority of patients were satisfied with the secure messaging features and reported they will continue to use them in the future, more than 40% stated that the secure message tool needs some additional improvement for effective usage. So choosing the best patient portal software with advanced secure messaging features will help you to gain patient satisfaction and improve the overall practice growth.