July 19, 2017
Patient portals are continually growing in functionality and are becoming more and more necessary for practices to maintain efficiency and meet standards for MIPS, MACRA and other health regulations, but, there is a growing problem related to patient portals and it has to do with patient portal promotion. The problem with patient portal promotion arises from within practices themselves. Most providers don’t make that big of an effort to promote their portal and they aren’t enthusiastic about it either. This behavior described can create a variety of unhealthy problems for your practice. For example, if you don’t promote your portal every day you will be missing out on patient engagement opportunities, more efficient workflows for your practice staff, increased billing collections, high patient retention rate, increased patient satisfaction, and so on.
On the other hand, if you do take the time to promote your portal, all of the potential problems your practice could be facing will turn into benefits. Some benefits might be harder to realize at first like patient engagement opportunities and increased efficiency for staff members, but as time goes on, the effort put into patient portal promotion will pay dividends.
A few ways you can increase patient portal promotion could be anything from generating a social media presence for your practice, to getting the whole staff team involved, to offering patients an incentive for using the portal. There are a variety of ways to help promote your patient portal, but obviously, the more you do and the harder you try, the more success you will have. If you are in need of some promotional ideas for your practice, you can download our Guide: Patient Portal Promotion. This guide includes a variety of promotion techniques and examples of how your practice could utilize them. This guide also includes a handout sheet on the last page; you can print this handout and give it to your patients as a step-by-step tutorial on how to access your portal. Just remember, stay positive and enthusiastic about your patient portal and you will eventually begin to realize all the benefits that come with patient interaction.