Top 4 Use Cases For Patient Portal Usage (Updated)

Today more than 90% of the healthcare practices provide patients with a platform that allows them to easily view, download and share their health information online. Interesting, right? but only about 30% of patients are using it. Most of the people are not interested in the portal that takes their time to open an application, and then view their lab reports, etc.

The main reason behind this drawback is patient engagement. A patient portal that engages patients is the one that will succeed at its best. Patients are expecting more advanced features that won’t take more time, in simple – easy access to patient portal software.

So, lets’ dig into the top 4 use cases for the best patient portal usage- and how patient data access will benefit healthcare providers as well.

Patient Engagement (in terms of patient data access)

Essentially, patient data access is tied in with working on in general quiet commitment and strengthening in care. Since meaningful use mandated patient portal adoption, the rationale has directed that a more educated patient would be a more instructed and accordingly more engaged patient.

Healthcare suppliers who have offered patient entry and clinical note access have seen a distinction in their patients, information has shown. A new review says that each understanding has advanced admittance to their supplier notes, has shown that patients come in better ready for visits and with significant inquiries regarding their consideration when they can see their information.

Eighteen percent of suppliers said their patients referenced the notes during a later clinical experience, while 14% said their patients had called the workplace with an inquiry regarding clinical notes.

It’s those increases in patient engagement and enactment that are persuading even the most hesitant of clinicians to offer more extensive patient data access through patient portal software. More clinicians said they thought their patients were caring more for themselves after executing patient admittance to clinician notes (30% pre-execution and 50 percent post); clinicians additionally said patients were more ready for their visits.

As medical services repayment turns out to be progressively situated in esteem, it will be significant for patients to become engaged through quiet information access. That actuation will make it more straightforward for the patient to deal with herself between visits, preferably packing down on costly intense scenes and permitting associations to follow through on a value-based care bottom line.

RELATED: Top 4 Barriers To Patient Portal Adoption In 2021

Caregiver Management

But it’s not just about the patient having access to medical data. It’s also important that family caregivers, like a guardian or an adult child caring for an aging parent, have data access, as well.

After all, data shows that family caregiver engagement can yield good outcomes like lower hospital readmission rates. Part of that will require good family caregiver engagement and education, starting with ample patient data access. However, HIPAA privacy rules pose a bit of a conundrum.

In terms of parents and guardians of pediatric patients, HIPAA does allow for fairly seamless caregiver data access. The situation becomes stickier when patients age into adolescence, but most states and organizations are working out strategies for proxy patient portal access that allow for some patient privacy and autonomy as well as family member engagement.

When looking at family engagement when the patient is an adult, that data access becomes more complicated. In some instances, organizations continue to set up proxy patient portals that can be helpful for adult children caring for an ailing parent. But still, access to those proxy patient portals is quite limited and has spurred on a trend of password sharing, which can have privacy and security consequences.

The insurgence of patient data access, particularly mobile patient data access, is presenting an opportunity to bypass that issue. Mobile patient portals and mobile personal health records are often enabled by application programming interfaces (APIs) that let patients download their medical information and then transmit that information to a loved one.

That process admittedly puts the onus on the patient and/or family caregiver, who needs both the digital health literacy and time to do the data transmitting. For older adults or individuals who are extremely sick, perfecting the proxy patient portal or even appointing a legal healthcare proxy may be more helpful for family engagement.

Care Coordination

As well as offering clinical information to relatives or guardians, patient information access—combined with interoperability through APIs—makes it simpler for patients to be the judges of care coordination. Employing an application-based API, patients can send their clinical records from their patient entrance or individual wellbeing record over to another healthcare supplier.

In an ideal world, this patient-drove care coordination would not be fundamental; EHRs would be interoperable enough to just communicate the information between divergent suppliers without the patient heading the charge.

Right now, the online patient data access and API-like patient portal software use are filling in that hole. The Commons Project helmed CommonHealth, an Android-based individual wellbeing records application that allows clients to download their patient entries, total them in a solitary record, and communicate select information to other people, including

healthcare providers. CommonHealth empowers that sort of care coordination, as does Apple Health Records, a comparative application implanted in iPhones.

RELATED: How To Engage Your Tech-Savvy Patients?(5 Easy Steps)

Healthcare Data Sharing

At long last, sufficient patient data access makes it more straightforward for people to impart select data to outside substances. This has been especially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which introduced a need to share clinical history, as COVID-19 experimental outcomes or immunization records.

All things considered, this need existed well before the Covid came aground in the US. For instance, youth sports have normally required a record of a yearly actual test, while schools required verification of specific childhood shots.

Yet, since the pandemic, this issue has become broader, with establishments going from cafés to gyms requesting this sort of data and almost everybody needs to go along. Patients need a simple and helpful method for doing this. That’s how patient portal software came in. The usage of the best patient portal software will ultimately help in healthcare information storing, viewing, and sharing at its best.

Final Thoughts

Healthcare data sharing may have been a crucial point for patient data access. The above-mentioned use cases have clearly shown the need for the patient portal usage and patient data access. Healthcare patient data access can make it even easier for individuals to carry with their health journey more informed and educated.

In the same way, when your healthcare practice grows, you don’t need to spend more time and resources to effectively engage your patients. Getting started with the best patient portal software will help you to recognize your patients needs. Give a try to Vozo patient portal solutions to experience better patient engagement and maximized revenue growth.