Technology is affecting the healthcare sector in many areas. One of the most major focuses is to increase the availability of streamlined service provision to patients. The introduction of patient portals in hospitals, which allows seamless interactions between patients and medical staff, has been a major revolution and is gaining pace across healthcare facilities globally. Patient portals in the healthcare sector are proving to be highly beneficial in various ways.
Enhancing communication
Patients seeking medical services get an opportunity to communicate with ease through patient portals. Communication that was previously only possible through multiple phone calls or emails – which often went unanswered and required significant allocation of time – can now be seamlessly done through the patient portal platform. This increases ease on the patient end, improves the consumers perception of the provider by reducing frustration, and aggregates patient communications in a way that assists staff in responding with ease and accuracy. The platform also offers more personalized services, where the patient gets an opportunity to receive urgent attention and answers before actually visiting the facility for more enhanced and personalized medical care.
Proper administration
With the newly introduced patient portals, hospitals have an opportunity to undertake proper patient registration and administration. Portals, upon patient registration, centrally store patient data in a database from where healthcare data handling, including retrieving, storing, and transmitting data becomes easy. Compared to the inefficiency of paper based filing systems, which are highly prone to misfiling and inefficient for quick retrieval, patient portals save many hours on the part of the hospital staff. Using the portals for patient registration also increases front office efficiency when it comes to admitting patients and offering them additional related services, referrals, and monitoring medication.
Enhanced physician-patient relationship
Most patient portals have been optimized to facilitate seamless interactions between physicians and patients. Portals give patients an opportunity to channel communication directly to their physicians without having to make phone calls, which go to the front office. In cases where physicians need updates on patients’ welfare, patients have an opportunity to communicate these health disclosures and welfare to their physicians directly. The one caveat regarding this type of communication is that it can impact physician work life balance, by requiring them to respond to communications during time that would normally have been protected.
Enhancing patient satisfaction and loyalty
Like any other service provision, the healthcare sector should focus on providing patients with high-quality services to enhance their satisfaction. The patient portal system of service delivery is one of the areas healthcare facilities have an easy opportunity to boost patient satisfaction. For instance, the portal systems eliminate various redundancies and wait times that patients have to endure before receiving attention at the facility. Being provided with speedy services ensures that patients are satisfied and thus likely to become loyal to the facility.