Patient portals connect consumers and healthcare providers. In addition to the convenience offered by this technology, healthcare providers can recognize economic benefits.
Here are three things to know about the advantages of patient portal adoption, according to "The Business Case for Portal Adoption" report from athenahealth.
1. Following patient portal adoption, healthcare practices experienced improvement in self-pay yield. Practices that increased portal use rates by 20 percent over 12 months experienced a 4.8 percent increase in self-pay yield.
2. Improvement in several financial metrics pre- and post-implementation was notable.
Average patient pay yield (8 percent improvement)
• Pre-implementation: 63.9 percent
• Post-implementation: 68.9 percent
Patient accounts receivable (16 percent improvement)
• Pre-implementation: 83 days
• Post-implementation: 70 days
Accounts sent to collections (21 percent improvement)
• Pre-implementation: 2.9 percent
• Post-implementation: 2.3 percent
3. Portals also increase patient loyalty. Patients with access to a portal are 13 times more likely to schedule a return visit. Over 18 months, practices that adopted portals had an 80 percent retention rate, compared to a 67 percent retention rate of practices without portals.