4 Ways Dental Patient Portal Makes Your Life Easy!
Dental patient portals are websites or access points that are exclusively designed to connect patients with their health records and treatment history at large.
Patient Portal usage rates are climbing as it allows patients to keep track of their dental health activities and related communication all in one place.
According to a report by AHA, 92 percent of patients can view their health records online today.
For the best treatment and patient experience, the exchangeable health information from all sources should be accurate, standardized, and easily available at every step of their oral health journey. This is where Dental Patient Portals sweeps in, providing a safe and seamless experience.
Here in this blog, let’s take a deeper look at the four major benefits of using a patient portal.
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Benefits of Dental Patient Portals
A dental patient portal is a great tool that helps your patients to access their dental history forms, such as appointments and prescriptions, while also being a medium to communicate with their healthcare providers. Also, some practice management solutions offer features like online scheduling and payment options in their patient portals.
1. Convenience
Offering your patients the convenience they deserve is key to ensuring satisfaction and loyalty. The role of patient portals in creating this next-level patient experience is phenomenal.
Dental patient portals have many unique features that add to the convenience factor, including online appointment scheduling, online payments, online forms that can be filled out even before reaching the practice for their appointment, and many more.
Patients can access their health records through the patient portal anywhere, anytime, and the only mandate is an internet connection. However, the information communicated by the practices through the portal must be presented in a simple and precise way so that it helps the patients in making the best care decisions for themselves.
Patients can also view consent forms and fill out their Medical History prior to the appointment, eliminating the need for unnecessary commute and wait times at the practice. Treatment plans are also available through the patient portals, for which patients can sign their consent after careful consideration.
2. Communication
Prompt communication is the crux of patient engagement. The dental patient portal allows patients to send secure messages to the practice and vice versa. This transparent and quick communication will rule out miscommunication to facilitate smooth patient engagement.
Patients can opt-in for reminders and notifications and choose a convenient medium and time of communication(text messages, email, or voice calls) through the patient portal.
These days, patients hugely depend on online resources to source information and learn about their health conditions. This happens especially if the answers from their dentists or front office staff do not convince the patient.
Since the portals are directly connected to the EHRs, it is easier for the practices to fetch accurate health records, information about the proposed treatments, payment options, and post-operative care instructions and offer them to the patients.
This relevant information will make patients empowered to make better informed clinical decisions and can become fuller partners in their oral health care.
3. Personalization
Dental patient portals can offer personalized patient experience at every touch point of their oral healthcare journey.
From scheduling their appointment to understanding the post-operative care instructions, patient portals offer the highest level of personalization for each patient.
Patient treatment information can be uploaded and made available to the patients as they might not recall every detail you tell them about the treatment. Some of it may skip their minds. Uploading the medical information in the portal that can be reviewed later will give your patients knowledge and compliance.
Patient portals also offer features such as instant messaging, request prescription refills, and other convenience integrations to keep your patients returning for more care.
An overwhelming majority of adults agreed that access to a dental patient portal would increase their general understanding of dental health and level of trust in their dental providers and help them manage their overall health goals. Source: CareQuest Institute for Oral Health’s Report
4. Cost Effective
According to the 21st Century Cures Act and Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) Final Rule, there is a mandate that all healthcare providers must make the following eight data types available to patients free of charge:
• Consultation notes
• Discharge summary notes
• History and physical
• Imaging narratives
• Laboratory report narratives
• Pathology report narratives
• Procedure notes
• Progress notes
The dental patient portal can make these data available for patients and help practices improve patient care and provider workflow. It’s user-friendly and puts all the desired actions at your patient’s fingertips. It eliminates the need for hard copies reducing paper waste which will be beneficial for the practice in the long run.
Time is the most valuable asset, and the patient portal saves your practice a lot of time.
By reducing the number of calls and communicating through the patient portal, life becomes so much easier for the patient as well as your staff.
Are Dental Patient Portals Safe?
Cybercriminals are always looking for weaknesses in systems to hijack personal details. Medical data holds the potential to lure them in. Allowing your patients’ sensitive health records to be published on dental patient portals raises another blaring question.
Are they safe?
Patient portals are safe and have an additional layer of protection as it holds vulnerable electronic patient health records. In order to access their patient portal, patients need to complete two-factor authentication. This includes entering the username and password along with their identity verification.
Security and privacy requirements are embedded into every layer of the portal infrastructure. This includes mechanisms to validate the practices and standards of third-party apps and APIs that allow more flexible data sharing. It is advisable to choose a patient portal provider that has a workflow set for practices to verify that a request for information is genuine and authorized.
Another common method used to protect patients’ data is encryption. It takes plain text and converts it into cipher text, which comprises seemingly random characters. The users will need a special key to decrypt it, keeping the sensitive data safe from potential hackers and cybercriminals.
CareStack Patient Portal
The CareStack Patient Portal is curated to improve patient care and provider workflow. CareStack patient portal is part of the all-in-one practice management software, and this eliminates the need for additional patient portal software subscriptions.
The most modern interface of the portal creates a comfortable user experience, and the patients can fill out their forms, sign consent and view treatment plans with ease.
The CareStack patient portal has a highly organized dashboard that informs the patients about the forms to be filled and signed. This will keep the patient informed, and they can view and access everything they need to do in one place.
Unique features that make CareStack Patient Portal stand out are:
1. Patients can view and confirm appointments through the portal which will considerably reduce the number of calls coming into the practice.
2. Patients can fill up their Medical History and sign Consent Forms prior to their appointment.
3. Users can view treatment plans and sign the consent once shared.
4. Patients can book their appointments through CareStack patient portal
5. Patients can access completed treatments with financials.
6. The portal allows your patients to send messages to the practice, upon which the practice can schedule a follow-up call or text message.
7. Patients can view their balance and payment types and make online payments through the portal.
8. Patients can have their statements sent to the patient portal to save time on the mailing process and/or misplacing their bills.
Upcoming features that will enhance the CareStack Patient Portal
1. A task-driven home page to boost accessibility and enhance user experience. The home page will present task wise representation of things to do for the patient. This approach is intended to ensure superior clarity and user experience for our patients. The patients will also be notified once they complete the tasks assigned to them through the portal.
2. Online form fields will be mapped to the PMS. When patients enter their personal details into the online forms, those will automatically be updated in the PMS patient profile. This will considerably reduce redundant data entry efforts, free up resources and save a lot of time.
CareStack is constantly fine-tuning our software to maximize the user experience and offer the best practice management solution for dental practices.
Conclusion
Dental patient portals are intended to help practices simplify your existing patient’s journey, build better relationships and save a lot of time. The portal will offer your patients the ability to actively participate in the decision-making of their oral health and healing journey.
Also, patient portals allow your patients to book their appointments anytime, eliminating the need to wait for the practice to open the next day. Mobile-optimized patient portals are game changers and have the potential to elevate your patients' dental health experience.
If your practice has not yet implemented patient portals for your patients, this is the best time to introduce one. Visit CareStack Patient Portal to learn more about the unique features we offer our customers.
