Optimizing Patient Portals for Meaningful Use

The healthcare providers in the US are mandated to integrate patient portal in their practice operations effectively in order to meet meaningful use stage 2 successfully. As far as Stage 3 requirements are concerned, it says that providers must use a patient portal to attest successfully, improve  quality care, ensure safety of patients and provide better health outcomes. According to government mandates, providers must use patient portal technology to engage patients effectively to manage their own healthcare.

To effectively engage patients, it is important to understand the link between patient portal and meaningful use. patient portal and meaningful use. The portal must be engaging and user-friendly, and must support patient-centered outcomes. The portal also must be integrated into clinical settings easily so that healthcare teams can use it to transport health data, communicate with patients, and support self-care and decision-making.

Effective implementation of a patient portal and its benefits enables providers attest to the patient engagement requirements of stage 2 meaningful use, such as:

•  Clinical summaries
•   Education resources for patients
•  Secure electronic of data
•  Real-time access to health information
•  Reminders for preventive and follow-up care

Patient portals also have great potential for meeting stage 3 meaningful use requirements that advocates self-management of healthcare and successful transport of health data. A portal is an effective medium which enables patients to collect their health information from different sources and share that with their providers.

Thus, portals have proved to be valuable to practices for serving varied patients who are coming from different strata, culture and age groups, or are chronically ill.