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the visitor is a current, new, or potential patient, each is just as
important as the next.
According to a
2006 Wall Street Journal Online Harris Interactive study, 74%
of patients want to be able to communicate with their doctor online
using patient portal features like secure messaging. At Sophrona, one of
my main duties is to help implement our Sage Portal features into client
sites by recommending changes to design, navigation, and content of the
website so that clients and patients receive the greatest value from
their new features by ensuring they are actionable, and easy to use and
understand. In order to achieve this, we have a process that guarantees
three major characteristics are present on each site: clear messaging,
effective funneling, and ease of use.
Although it may be obvious, the most important aspect of making
patient portal tools actionable for patients is to ensure that they are
easy to use. We work closely with our clients and use their feedback
from patients and staff to guarantee that portal communication is
intuitive, simple, and a positive experience for everyone involved.
Along with testing and quality improvement, this has helped to make Sage
Portal and its available features an easy to use suite of tools.
However, a feature that is easy to use can easily get lost in the
greater whole of the rest of a website. With the variety of services,
procedures, resources, features, and other content that each clients
wishes to provide, achieving success in clear messaging and effective
funneling can be a much more daunting task than it may seem.
With a feature like Secure Messaging, the definition of the phrase is
not always obvious to patients as to what purpose the feature serves,
which is why I always know that clear messaging for this and other
features should begin on the homepage. Therefore, its important to have
a dedicated and prominent area that lists and links your patient portal
features, but more importantly, defines them so that your patients know
how they will benefit from them. For example:
Secure Messaging - Send us questions, feedback, and other
information to our doctors regarding your eye health, our practice, or
billing with guaranteed security and privacy.
Online Registration - Register as a new patient online and
save time when you come to our practice for your first visit.
Appointment Scheduling - Schedule a new appointment or change
or cancel an existing one, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
Each patient has a different goal when they come to your website, and
effective funneling is a way, in combination with clear messaging and
ease of use, is a way to ensure that users progress to their desired
goal. On the homepage, its easy for me to think about all of the
different kinds of patients who are visiting a clients site and define
the patient portal features accordingly, as shown above.
Beyond the homepage, I have to think more specifically about why a
patient might be on that particular page, and then use smaller,
consistent areas to list relevant portal features with shorter
descriptions that are unique to the page that your patient is on.
For example, based on the goals of a patient that is on the LASIK
page of a website, I use effective funneling and clear messaging to
promote a call-to-action for Secure Messaging, Online Registration, and
Appointment Scheduling, but would choose to put less emphasis on Contact
Lens Ordering or Bill Payment.
On a Finance or Billing page of a site, I typically put emphasis on
promoting a finance-specific call-to-action for Secure Messaging and
Contact Lens Ordering, which are two portal features that involve
transactional uses, but it isnt as beneficial to call out features such
as Online Registration and Appointment Scheduling. I use effective
funneling and clear messaging on pages such as by inserting text or
buttons that link to their according portal features with short,
actionable text, such as the following:
Secure Messaging - Ask questions about your bills and
payments.
Contact Lens Ordering - Order contact lenses and manage your
transactions from home.
Effective funneling and clear messaging allow patients to be aware of
the things they can do from any given area of the website, i.e. they
understand the portal features that are available on the site.
Secondarily, patients are then able to access these easy to use features
from relevant areas of the site. With these three essential
characteristics in place, patient portal features quickly propel a
website’s usefulness and value to its practice and to the practice’s
patients.
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