Patient Portal | Lawrence General Hospital (2024)

FAQs

Why do some patients fail to participate in the use of the patient portal? ›

Prefer to Speak Directly with a Physician

When all is said and done, surveys of why patients won't use the patient portal come down to one main reason: they prefer to speak with their physician directly. Patients want to actually talk with real people about their health, including qualified doctors and nurses.

Patient portals can help you access medical records, set up appointments, communicate with your health care professional, and pay medical bills. Some portals are created exclusively for a hospital or clinic, but there are companies that offer solutions that multiple health care systems can use.

Some potential disadvantages of patient portals include:

Disparities in age, technological literacy, and internet access can make use of patient portals intimidating or unattractive to some patients.

They're designed to make life easier for patients, and studies show they can even help reduce hospital visits, like in 2020 when heart failure patients using these portals saw fewer hospital readmissions.

The most common barriers to patient portal adoption are preference for in-person communication, not having a need for the patient portal, and feeling uncomfortable with computers, which are barriers that are modifiable and can be intervened upon.

About 3 in 5 individuals nationwide reported they were offered and accessed their online medical record or patient portal in 2022 — this represents a 50 percent increase since 2020. Figure 1: Percent of individuals nationwide who were offered and accessed their online medical record or patient portal, 2014-2022.

With a patient portal, your healthcare provider owns the information and they maintain it. They make the necessary updates based on your visits, results, and queries. In contrast, with a PHR, you are the owner. As we've said, this gives you greater control over your health information.

Understanding MyChart messaging

Multiple members of your care team may view MyChart messages in order to get an appropriate and efficient response; this may include nurses or advance practice clinicians other than your primary care provider (PCP).

Some physicians, like Joel Katz, a Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine and director of the internal medicine residency program at Brigham and Women's, reply when they receive a thank you note. "When I get a thank-you note, I appreciate it. And I try to respond to it," Katz said.

Con: Healthcare data security concerns

A patient portal may be just one more place for a potential hacker or healthcare data thief to access a patient's data, leaving that patient liable to identity theft. However, with appropriate safeguards, these concerns can be kept at a minimum.

What are 3 benefits of a patient portal? ›

Patient portal technology can enhance efficiency, boost engagement, minimize the need for phone calls and other administrative tasks, and more. Ultimately, patient portal technology not only saves providers time and resources but also enhances the quality of care they provide.

Patients that struggle with tech have a hard time with things like Pre-Checkin. Not customizable. Very hard to customize the solution to our organization's needs while ensuring upgrades are still possible. Not able to use facial recognition to log in as a patient/user.

Lack of online medical records - Roughly 32% of patients reported not having an online medical record, which is a prerequisite for utilizing a patient portal. Limited internet access - Approximately 25% of patients cited a lack of internet access as a barrier to using patient portals.

A patient portal is a secure online website that gives patients convenient, 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an Internet connection. Using a secure username and password, patients can view health information such as: Recent doctor visits. Discharge summaries.

An online patient portal is a website that is used to access personal health information. The patient portal is helpful for patients to keep track of their medical visits, test results, billing, prescriptions and insurance, among others.

they simply forget. Reasons patients fail to keep appointments include inability to pay, difficulty facing illness, and constant long wait times at the doctor's office.