Patient Portals

Top tips for successful patient portal secure messaging

April 15, 2024 - If you’re a clinician with your inbox open for patient portal secure messaging, you need to make sure you have a good inbox management strategy in place. Coming up against strong patient demand for secure direct messaging and unabating levels of administrative burden and provider burnout, healthcare practitioners need to consider the...

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Doc bills for patient portal messages are a rare occurrence

by Sara Heath

Patient portal messages represent just a drop in the bucket of overall evaluation and management (E&M) services, according to new Michigan Medicine data, findings that may help temper industry...

Patient data access speeds up after 21st Century Cures Act

by Sara Heath

Patients are waiting less time to access their imaging and radiology reports today, according to a new report, a trend that’s the credit of the 21st Century Cures Act and the information blocking...

Patient portal message responses vary by race, ethnicity

by Sara Heath

The doctor is in? For Black patients sending patient portal messages, that might not be true, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open. The analysis of nearly 58,000 patient portal messages sent...

Using gen AI to translate medical jargon in discharge notes

by Sara Heath

Using too much medical jargon in discharge notes may not be conducive to patient engagement, but researchers from NYU Langone are exploring how generative AI can fix that problem. In a new study...

Out-of-pocket costs for patient portal messages reach $25

by Sara Heath

It’s getting increasingly common for healthcare providers to bill for patient portal messages, and it’s leaving some patients on the hook for an out-of-pocket bill, albeit the bill is...

Did COVID-19 Help Close Disparities in Patient Portal Use?

by Sara Heath

The COVID-19 pandemic may have increased patient portal use and reduced age- and sex-based utilization disparities, but there are still differences in how often people of certain races and health...

Patient Portals & Open Notes Increase Referral Access by Up to 40%

by Sara Heath

Does patient portal access make a difference in referral access after a primary care appointment? According to one new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), it...

Behind Epic’s Award-Winning MyChart Patient Portal Advancements

by Sara Heath

Epic Systems thinks it’s on the brink of a new frontier in patient portal use, saying MyChart is stock-full of the functionalities consumers want, and users are now leveraging it to move the needle on clinical outcomes and the...

Breaking Down Patient Requests for EHR, Medical Record Corrections

by Sara Heath

As healthcare organizations continue to strive for better patient safety, they will have to ensure an adequate process for fulfilling patient requests for EHR and medical record corrections. EHR and medical record corrections are exactly...

‘Every Patient, Every Time’: Boosting Techquity in Patient Portal Use

by Sara Heath

For many healthcare organizations, the patient portal has become the place where patients access the healthcare system and keep coming back. It’s a wraparound digital experience that meets the moment on healthcare consumerism, but if...

Health Orgs Look for Consolidated Patient Engagement Tech Footprint

by Sara Heath

Patient engagement technology vendors can expect a shifting landscape as their customer base looks toward a more consolidated, consumer-centered patient engagement strategy, according to the latest...

How to Achieve Patient Portal ‘Techquity’ & Digital Health Equity

by Sara Heath

A group of health IT academics is laying out the argument for closing the digital divide, saying that achieving what they termed as “techquity” in patient portal adoption is actually...

Patient Data Access, Mobile Patient Portals Reach Unprecedented Use

by Sara Heath

Patient data access is at an all-time high, with new data from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT showing three in five patients being offered and accessing their digital health...

Patients Want Doc Counsel Under Cures Act Patient Data Access Rules

by Sara Heath

New data in the journal Radiation Oncology is providing more insights into how the 21st Century Cures Act’s provision mandating immediate patient data access and access to lab results impacts...

Did the 21st Century Cures Act Patient Data Access Rules Hurt Experience?

by Sara Heath

The information blocking rule under the 21st Century Cures Act, which eased patient data access, may have had the unintended consequence of disrupting the patient experience, with a new study in JAMA...

Best Practices for Improving Patient-Provider Communication

by Sara Heath

Patient-provider communication is at the forefront of the healthcare experience. Good communication has far-reaching impacts ranging from poor patient satisfaction to a misunderstanding of treatments...

OpenNotes Launches Resources to Help Patients Use Clinician Notes

by Sara Heath

Patient advocacy group OpenNotes wants to make it easier for patients to take advantage of open clinical notes through the launch of its online resource, How To Use Open Notes. Open notes is the...

Key Considerations for Patient Data Access, Patient Engagement

by Sara Heath

Most experts agree that patient data access is crucial for strong patient engagement. Although most patient engagement strategies also incorporate principles of patient-centered care, patient education, and social determinants of health,...

Parental Patient Portal Use Rate in Pediatrics Lower than 50%

by Sara Heath

Only around 43 percent of parents or guardians use the patient portal to manage their child’s health, representing a pretty serious lapse in patient engagement, according to a new survey from the...