Patient/Doctor Interaction
Good doctor/patient portals make it easy to bring the doctor into the equation. In most cases that means making your portal flexible enough to integrate popular scheduling software but also robust enough to remain HIPAA compliant.
Pharmacy Requests
Pharmacy requests need to be easy for patients and doctors alike if your healthcare HIPAA portal deals with prescription medications. Patients should be able to see how many refills they still have from a previous prescription and then send a request to a doctor if a new prescription is necessary. They should also be able to contact a pharmacist easily for consultations.
It should also be easy for doctors to approve this request, whether it’s the first time or the hundredth time they’ve used your portal. Filling in as much information as possible on forms (so that the doctor doesn’t have to) can also make doctors happier working with your portal.
Making Appointments
Seamless calendar integration with multiple scheduling software is vital to incorporating as many doctors as possible. Your portal can help customers make and manage appointments, see details about the visit, select HIPAA compliant telehealth options, and reschedule appointments.
Finding a Doctor
Some portals are designed to help customers find doctors. For instance, a company might sell an implantable medical device. Once the patient has decided they’d like an in-person consultation with a doctor, the portal can provide an interactive map and let the patient determine which doctor in the area they’d like to see. Telehealth or telechat can be scheduled with that doctor with the press of a button.
Telehealth Appointments
Customers want to get their health attended to in as few steps as possible. In addition to your primary business model, your site can reduce the steps they need to take by offering telehealth connections to doctors, pharmacists, and other healthcare providers. This often includes video chat and text chat, both of which can be made HIPAA compliant on your website.
Medical Devices
Medical devices are increasingly interactive with portals. Bluetooth-enabled machines record data from a patient and then relay that information to the patient’s account page or dashboard on your portal. Users can then invite people—a doctor or nutritionist—to access the information as well. This “team-based” approach can extend to family members or friends that are keeping the patient accountable. A common scenario is a glucose meter shares results with the person who is preparing meals for the wearer.