A physician portal can be a significant competitive advantage for an organization that wants a more outstanding clinician commitment. Physicians need fast access to vital clinical and financial data. So setting up a robust physician portal allows your organization to deliver mobile or web-based access to all the useful data residing in your information system.
In a 238-bed community hospital that serves over 275,000 people without using conventional physician offices, their physician portal drives data exchange, enhances care coordination, and enables them to provide good quality care.
A well-designed physician portal provides a user-friendly interface for the secure retrieval and viewing of patient healthcare data from different sources. It should include security features such as SSL encryption, device IDs, logging of all user activities, and transaction tracking to comply with HIPAA regulations.
Let’s delve further into why having separate physicians portal can be the key to improving physician efficiency and care outcomes.
1. Improved Physician Productivity
Physician portals reduce the amount of time doctors use to do official communication. They help doctors cut down on the need to take phone calls, read and send faxes, making it easier to coordinate appointments and follow up with patients.
A robust physician portal gives doctors more time to attend to patients during their regular work hours. Ultimately, this improves the quality of care and treatment outcomes for most patients.
2. Faster and Easier Communication
Physicians need to maintain constant communication with other clinicians, nurses, and ancillary staff. With a robust physician portal, they can reduce the number of calls they make to nurses and the medical records department by accessing information they need through the portal. The portal also provides 24/7 access to information through a mobile or web-enabled device.
Doctor’s portals also provide a protected private email system for the care team and consumers to maintain fast and efficient communication without violating any HIPAA regulations regarding protected health information.
Doctors can access all the historical and current patient data in one place from any device. The physician portal is directly connected to the patient chart, and it also pulls in data from various sources. Providers can view patient information in an aggregated, workflow-friendly format.
3. Lower Cost of Healthcare
One of the significant components of healthcare costs is the amount of time a physician needs to spend to move from initial patient interviews to diagnosis and treatment. Physician portals make it possible for physicians to make a smarter diagnosis and provide an effective treatment plan within a shorter time.
Faster access to information, resources, and patient clinical data make decision making and treatment faster. As a result, patients spend less time in the hospital, with better treatment outcomes. Overall, this reduces the cost of care for the provider and the patient.
4. Real-Time Communication and Alerts
Physician portals contain rules-based notifications. They allow doctors to know about a significant event regarding a patient, a test result, or another physician as soon as it happens.
Notifications and alerts can be set up and modified by each user of the portal. The doctor specifies the criteria for notifications and receives prompt alerts in real-time. Most alerts are linked with events that affect a patient’s state of health, vitals, or a particular clinical value.
5. More Efficient Billing
A doctor’s portal may have a feature for capturing patients’ charges or fees paid for professional services. The portal submits these charges to the billing department. This, in turn, speeds up the billing process and drastically reduces the occurrence of lost charges.
Would You like to Set Up an Effective Physician Portal?
To build a professionally designed physician portal for your clinicians, contact us at LifePoint Informatics by calling 877.522.8378 today.