Medical and medical billing experts must prioritize user experience to assist patients in getting more value from online portals and motivate them to use helpful healthcare technology tools. We’ll go over how to pick or create tools that are ideal for patients rather than ones that are very difficult, intricate, or difficult to use.

Online hospital patient portals are important for the healthcare experience as the world becomes increasingly computerized. Digital portals allow patients to schedule appointments and view patient information records without the assistance of your team, which keeps patients’ health information organized and improves staff productivity. 

A seamless user experience

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) finalized federal rulemaking in May 2020 to improve patient and caregiver access to, interchange of, and use of electronic health information. Patients’ demands aren’t always taken into consideration when designing patient portals, even though they have the potential to improve the healthcare experience for everyone.

Patients desire a seamless user experience that is as close to perfect as possible when they choose your practice. Many clinics already use a combination of electronic medical records (EMR), administrative software, and other technologies as the use of healthcare technology increases. The patient portal you select will only make up a small part of your complex digital infrastructure.

Think about how a hospital patient portal would integrate into your digital ecosystem before choosing one. A comprehensive healthcare IT system will also make your workforce more productive. This enhances user experience by enabling you to service more patients quickly.

How inadequate portal adoption can harm your practice

Nearly 40% of people who received access to their patient portal at least once in 2020 were among the roughly six in ten people who received it nationwide. In 2020, a third of hospital patient portal users—nearly twice as many as in 2017—downloaded their electronic medical records. 

Healthcare professionals are dedicated to patient involvement and are always looking for fresh approaches to motivate patients to take an active role in their care. However, boosting patient engagement is challenging for practitioners, particularly given the advent of healthcare consumerism and the constant change in user preferences.

Disengaged individuals are less likely to follow treatment regimens and adopt healthy lifestyles. In the age of value-based care, poor patient engagement ultimately affects your reimbursements and the well-being of your patients and your practice.

Simplicity is a necessity for the patient portal

The medical process for a patient is frequently loaded with challenging procedures. Anytime you make a complicated process easier to understand, you can differentiate your practice from others. This is especially true for seniors who require frequent medical care but are less tech-savvy than younger generations. Patients prefer providers who offer user-friendly websites and health information. 

Patients ought to be able to log in and access the data they require with the fewest possible steps and without assistance from your personnel. Consider adding or selecting software that employs graphics or animations to point patients in the proper way rather than utilizing long blocks of text to advise your patients, which can make your website harder to read. 

If patients experience frustration each time they access your site, they won’t stay for very long. If your online experience is just as encouraging as your in-person experience, they might decide to stick with you.

Building patient loyalty with the right user experience

It is important to prioritize user experience if patient turnover is to be avoided. Patients are searching for practices that offer feature-rich, easy-to-use technologies as internet tools become more important to healthcare teams and everyone’s medical journeys. Both an accessible patient portal and training to assist your team in setting up these portals can make your clinic stand out even more.

Importance of evaluating accessibility

Healthcare practitioners commonly encounter highly varied patients. Your patient portal should be as near a “one size fits all” platform as is practical for your clientele, even though no program is perfect for everyone. Both those with impairments and those with various educational backgrounds should be able to access it.

User testing as a tool for success

It can be challenging to gauge the ease of use for folks who don’t have the same expertise when you’re a healthcare professional who is accustomed to utilizing industry-specific technologies every day. User testing is, therefore, essential to creating a great patient portal experience.

It’s not necessary to spend a lot of time conducting user testing. Invite a handful of your devoted patients to check out your site if you have a small practice, perhaps in exchange for a gift card, discount, or cash payment. Either sit down with each patient and watch how they use the platform or ask them to complete a survey.

Conclusion

Sixapart can help you set up the right patient portal. Sixapart Healthcare, one of the companies offering revenue cycle services, developed SIXA, an integrated, intelligent, and quickly adaptable automation platform. The application includes an extensive library of pre-built bots, a special design studio for quickly configuring automation solutions, and a control tower to track the performance of the deployed bots. 

SIXA, an advanced business workflow-enabled AI platform from Sixapart Healthcare, can build automation use cases on-the-fly and collaborate with various top automation frameworks.