Is Patient Portal a Thing of the Past?

The following is a guest article by Liza Dzhezhora, Healthcare IT Analyst at Itransition.
For years, patient portals have been considered the most efficient tool for patient engagement.  According to the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Stat poll, by 2018 patient portals were employed by about 90% of the surveyed providers. 
However, this titanic effort in patient portal development alone seems to be insufficient for portal adoption: the same poll reports that barely 30% of patients use these solutions, year after year. So are portals a thing of the past or is it still possible to revive them? We’ll look into the matter. 
What’s wrong with patient portals?
In fact, the wave of patient portal deployment wasn’t caused by patients’ interest. In fact, it was
healthcare providers’ initiative or, should we say, their need to comply with Meaningful Use
Stage 2 requirements. This federal regulatory document called for sharing EHR data with
patients to improve their engagement and independent health management. Patient portals
have to be made a key tool enabling patient onboarding, with providers who managed to enroll
their patients receiving a monetary incentive.
However, in the majority of cases, patient centricity behind portal development was only
nominal: portals often had cumbersome and confusing interfaces. What’s more, quite often
patients had no idea the facility offered a portal at all, let alone used the tool.
So is it the end of portals? It is unl...

Source: EMR and HIPAA - July 6, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System health management Itransition Liza Dzhezhora MFMA MGMA Stat Novant Health Patient Portal Source Type: blogs