Ophthalmology Patient Portal and Online Communication Editorial

Whether for “Patient Palooza” or everyday life, it is time to really “push” the use of your patient portal

February 1, 2012

I found myself trying to uncover a theme for this editorial, like a squirrel ravaging for a lost acorn buried beneath the snow. However, the reality is that there really is no theme; monthly, weekly or daily, that can represent the patient experience of using a portal. Although Ground Hog Day and Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, “Patient Palooza” as a “write in holiday” just doesn’t cut it!

At the end of 2011, it felt appropriate to coordinate the holiday with an incentive for practice staff to attack adoption and create some urgency to drive patient utilization. We called it “Holiday Blitz”. The winning team capitalized with over 900% adoption growth over 60 days which lead to a pizza lunch provided by… yours truly! The goal was to incent staff to promote adoption over a condensed period of time. The objectives of the event were:

• To re-ignite habits of inviting patients to use the portal.
• To create some fun in the office over a typically stressful time of year.
• To engage practice staff and reward their efforts.

 Terri Blattenbauer
 Implementation
 Consultant

We seemed to have accomplished our goals. Here’s what Vicki from the winning North Suburban Eye Associates had to say: “Our success for the Holiday Blitz contest really started with the time patients scheduled their appointment. Our receptionist told all new patients to go to our website to register online prior to their appointment. Then I was able to look in the schedule see who had not registered yet and put a call out to them. It was those extra calls that increased our registrations and helped us win.”

Although astounding efforts were noticed, not all teams could win. Nonetheless, in the spirit of teamwork and “everyone’s a winner” attitude, most teams finished the contest with a renewed sense of accomplishment and success for being part of “the bigger picture”. Irene, from Northwest Eye put it in perspective “The positive was that it was fun to offer the contest to staff! It served as a reminder for us to direct patients to register online and reinforced the process for continuous improvement as we strive to increase the number of patients registering online. This ultimately decreases the time completing paperwork at the appointment. “

I think they would all agree that the reason for their quick turn around and increase in patient usage over a short period time was that their front line staff grasped the idea, engaged themselves, and did an excellent job directing patients on what to do next. We are beyond the concept of simply “inviting” patients that we have on the phone. We know however, that it is more effective to “direct” them to the portal to complete the necessary information prior to coming in for their appointment. There are more reasons to do so than not and who better to listen to than the place patient’s trust their eye sight to!

2012 will be a year to evaluate what’s being done as new marketing to re-energize staff and get new patients using this 24/7 convenience even more. Many practices will find out that just because you put out fresh flyers when your portal went live, you have probably plateaued by now and need to renew your efforts.

This year, Sophrona will be launching a new Dashboard tool to give you an at-a-glance look at how compliance of best practices determines how successful you’ve been in realizing your return on investment. We are excited for you to have this tool! We also have a lineup of great new webinars to educate, inform and renew your energy for a positive patient experience. Many are geared toward the front desk staff member or the phone scheduler.

No matter the time of year, the temperature or the theme. There’s always a reason to use the portal. You should never run short of ideas to promote and engage!