A portal opens an entirely new world for patients invite patients to this new experience Portal Adoption Strategies that Work By Elizabeth W. Woodcock, MBA, FACMPE, CPC A patient portal an online application for patients to interact and communicate with your practice and its providers is of little value if patients aren t signing up. Announcing your portal is often not enough you need to launch a campaign to promote its services and convenience. If you haven t engaged in a full-fledged public relations and advertising campaign before, now s the time to get going. A portal can be one of the best investments you practice can make to improve patient service and satisfaction, with the additional payoff of reducing staff work involving telephone messages and other patient communications.
Use these proven strategies to develop your portal adoption action plan: Get buy-in. Providers and staff have a major influence on portal adoption. If they don t encourage patients to use the portal, registrations won t occur. Hold a meeting before launching the campaign to review pertinent facts about the portal, answer questions about the promotional campaign s goals, and explain the important roles of providers and staff in a successful portal launch. Sell staff and providers on the value of the portal to them by pointing out how it cuts down on telephone calls, allows patient communication to be automatically documented, and gathers more cash faster by accepting online payments, to name just a few benefits. Don t just promote the portal s general benefits; focus on the specific value that it brings to your practice to raise awareness among providers and staff. Establish a goal. Increasing awareness about the portal is terrific, but establishing a tangible target ensures that your efforts will pay off. The process of setting and reaching goals starts within your practice. That is, it s your responsibility so set a goal with a measurable objective. At your next staff meeting, decide on a goal perhaps 1,000 portal registrations within the first month. Track sign-ups using the Utilization Dashboard and report your campaign s successes regularly and often. Reinforce the goal by developing an internal display that measures progress. For example, create a graphic of a thermometer or perhaps an image associated with the portal (a ship s porthole, for example) to color in your progress. While the obvious objective is to raise awareness about the portal, it pays to establish a specific goal to achieve desired rates of patient adoption. p. 2
Extol the virtues. Share the benefits of your portal by taking the time to explain its functionality to patients. Present these valuable attributes in a poster on display in the reception area, as well as in a brochure to distribute. List specific advantages of the portal in your practice, such as how it can send notifications and details about test results, or how it gives patients a new way to communicate directly with providers. Stress the convenience factor by pointing out how the portal makes it possible to request appointments, renew prescriptions or inquire about balances at any time of day or night. (Visit http://medfusion.biz.vistaprint.com to order a wide variety of promotional materials.) Don t register, invite. A portal opens an entirely new world for patients. Point out that what was once only accessible by telephone trudging through call distributor prompts, talking to harried staff members or leaving voicemails is now available online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Don t encourage patients to register because they ll see it as just more paperwork; instead, invite patients to this new experience. Review your communication with patients to make sure that the verbiage is consistent with this message. Sample Invitation Language DEAR MR./MS PATIENT, We invite you to join our patient portal. It s a new way of communicating with our practice 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The portal is our way of making it more convenient for you to get in touch with us from scheduling appointments to renewing prescriptions all online. As one of our valued patients, we invite you to experience this new way of staying in touch with us. We hope to see you soon online! p. 3
Promote the portal on the phone. Don t wait until patients come to your office; address portal registration when patients call to schedule appointments. A good time to work the promotion into the telephone conversation is after the appointment date and time are finalized. Then tell the caller: Ms. Patient, you can access all of the paperwork you need for your visit by using our portal. It also provides you with directions to our office. Completing this paperwork in advance saves you time when you arrive for your appointment. Are you online now? [Pause] Let me give you the Web address. Alternatively, invite the patient to your portal by capturing their email address. Ms. Patient, we have a new online registration process at our practice which saves you time when you arrive for your appointment. May I get your email address to send you the invitation? To know who to invite and who to not it s ideal if your practice management system prominently displays for scheduling staff which patients have signed up, and which have not. Communicate with patients. In addition to brochures and posters, consider other methods of informing patients. Use on-hold messaging to promote the portal, a significant opportunity to communicate with patients considering the amount of hold time patients typically experience. Create an insert for statement mailings, an initiative that adds only the cost of the paper since the postage for the statements is already incurred. Develop a mock prescription pad for providers to give a notice to patients with a message regarding the availability of test results or renewal requests. Create single-page documents for frequently asked questions, such How do I sign up for your portal? ; What can I do on your portal? and so forth. Have the documents ready to pass out to patients at every opportunity upon arrival, in the lab, upon scheduling a follow-up visit and so forth, and post them on your website. p. 4
Use pictures. Words are motivating, but pictures are powerful. Produce a video featuring your providers and staff discussing various aspects of the portal, or simply focus on the portal registration process. Post the video on YouTube, directing patients to it via a link on your website. Also, play the video in your reception area for patients to view while they wait. Incorporate photographs of real patients with their permission, of course using the portal. Ask them to speak on camera about the value the portal s applications provide to them real-life examples are especially compelling because they show the positive impact the portal can have on their lives, too. Incent patients with time. Portals create significant efficiencies for your practice, but they can also reduce wait time for patients. Encourage portal adoption by reminding patients of how it saves them time. For example, your telephone greeting or on-hold message could remind patients that they can renew prescriptions or schedule appointments quickly by going online. Up the ante by guaranteeing a reduced wait time upon arrival for those patients who have logged on to the portal and successfully completed their pre-visit paperwork. Assist with registration. Signing up for a portal can be a major roadblock. Patients may be confused or simply not want to take the time. Take advantage of those minutes that your patients are in your office before they are escorted to the exam room. Assign a member of staff to approach waiting patients and ask if they have signed up for the portal. Equipping that employee with a tablet PC means he or she can sit down with patients and immediately sign them up while extolling the various tools that can be found on the portal. Another opportunity is to set up a computer kiosk with an Internet connection in the reception area. Offer to walk patients through the registration process. Conducting in-office portal registration offers two advantages: it helps patients pass the time and it assures they get registered. If you don t have a staff member who can carry out these tasks, hire a former patient, student or other qualified candidate as a temporary, part-time employee to act as your portal ambassador. p. 5
Integrate with quality initiatives. A portal can significantly boost your efforts to engage patients to establish their own plan of care. With the government and commercial payers starting to reimburse health care professionals for quality improvement efforts, patient self-management a key principle in the patient-centered medical home moves into the forefront. These goals can get a significant boost from portal applications that empower patients to access their test results and review them over time. Tracking recommended care an annual GYN appointment, for example is also a valuable resource a portal can provide to support patients. Ensuring that the portal is a tool in the patient s self-management support plan encourages usage among providers and staff, as well as patients. Meet MACRA/MIPS compliance. The government s EHR Incentive Programs place significant value on communicating with patients outside of the traditional channel the telephone. A patient portal is a cornerstone in your practice s journey to complying with Meaningful Use and the new MACRA program, which includes the required criteria to provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information upon request (CCD). Eligible professionals participating in incentive programs must offer clinical summaries to patients for each office visit. You can use the portal to achieve compliance with the program s menubased criteria to send reminders to patients for preventive/follow-up care and provide patients with timely electronic access to their health information. Make it fun. The reality is that registering for a portal takes time, so the onus is on you to put some entertainment value into your sign-up promotions. Consider these ideas for a portal awareness campaign: p. 6
Choose a wacky holiday to celebrate, like National Lollipop Day on July 20. Pass out lollipops with the information about your portal adhered to the stick. Find more national day ideas online. Wear Hawaiian shirts, and let patients visiting the office that day know that all the providers and staff are surfing their way to the patient portal. Decorate the office in a nautical theme to reveal that the portal is the patient s port hole to your practice. Designate the staff member in charge of the portal as the portal queen or king, with other staff serving as the portal princesses and princes. Don a tiara or crown, and you re certain to get a lot of questions about it. Portal adoption doesn t have to be all work making the process fun can result in improved adoption rates. Ask me... It s not uncommon to see retail employees wear badges or ribbons promoting a new product or service that encourages customers to inquire about it. Consider creating colorful Ask Me about Our Portal ribbons that staff can wear. Add to the excitement with signage around the office to support the campaign. Encouraging patients to ask about the portal gives staff an opening to discuss the benefits. p. 7
Establish a prize. Inspire patients to register for your portal by offering a reward for participation. Announce that you will choose, at random, winners each month, selected from patients who have recently signed up for the portal. Consider offering a prize of nominal value, such as a gift certificate to the local farmer s market or a free fruit smoothie at a local retailer. Instead of drawing names, extend a small reward to every patient who signs up, or the first 100 who do so. Even a nominal prize a water bottle bearing your logo and the phrase I m a web portal pioneer can get patients enthusiastic about signing up. If you don t want to go the route of providing small gifts to patients, consider offering to donate $1 to a local charity for every patient who signs up. If you treat children, consider creating a contest between schools, with $1 going to the pediatric patient s school for every patient registration. Create an internal reward system. Offering bonuses or just words of encouragement to patients may be all you need. However, many practices find that their providers and staff are the keys to boosting portal adoption among patients. Consider similar incentives such as small prizes or charitable donations gas cards are always fantastic motivators to the staff member who gathers at least 100 patient email addresses for the week, for example. Use social media. Encourage participation with your portal via a social media campaign. Reach out to online users of your Facebook business page or Twitter account, for example, and keep them informed about the value of the portal and how to register. Make regular postings to your practice s Facebook page espousing the portal s benefits, with a link to the patient portal. Or send occasional Tweets with announcements, timely reminders and a link to your website or portal page. p. 8
Develop a QR code. Create a quick response (QR) code that square barcode that many retailers now use to inform customers who scan the code with their smartphones - for your portal. There are a multitude of free QR code generators online, including Delivr. Place the QR code on brochures, patient statements and other printed matter. Direct patients to scan the code, which leads to your portal s home page. Consider a landing page for direct access, or perhaps to a page of frequently asked questions about the portal registration process (with a link to your portal s registration page, of course). In addition to placing the QR codes on all materials about the portal, add it to signage in the office that encourages patients to scan the code. Efforts to raise awareness. Whether it s to increase donations to a cause, build volunteer support, or create legislative change can be challenging but rewarding experiences. Successful campaigns are multifaceted efforts; they require a team effort and, often, extra energy from staff, in a concentrated period of time. Another critical success factor in awareness campaigns is the use of multiple but complementary strategies, because one never knows which approach will be the most successful. With some effort, you ll find your efforts to promote your portal will soon pay off. The end result will be the rewards of convenience and efficiency for your practice - and your patients. p. 9
Checklist Seek and gain buy-in from providers and staff. Set a goal with a measurable objective. Measure progress and display it internally to staff and providers. Explain functionality and emphasize the benefits to patients. Send patients invitations to experience the convenience of the portal. Describe the portal s attributes and convenience during phone calls with patients. Capture email addresses during phone calls. Use brochures, posters, handouts, statement stuffers and on-hold messages to promote the portal. Post videos showing providers, staff and patients describing the portal. Stress the time-savings aspects of the portals in telephone greetings, onhold messages and staff scripts during scheduling and registration. Offer to help patients sign up when they visit the practice. Leverage the portal to support practice quality initiatives. Use the portal to send CCDs and meet important criteria for government EHR Incentive Programs. Use entertaining promotions to expand awareness of the portal. Offer small prizes or charitable donations to patients or to staff. Use social media, such as Facebook, to encourage portal sign-ups. Link the portal to a QR code that is used on printed materials. p. 10
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