Healthcare organizations are all about helping their patients – and what better way to help patients than to create a patient portal? Now that healthcare and healthcare marketing are increasingly going digital, your patients will expect more from your organization’s online presence. A portal will help you delight and engage your patients. But, how do you make sure your patients will love it? Check out these 5 tips for the perfect patient portal.
1. Meet Priorities
Your portal needs to cater to your patients’ needs. That means it should include the basic necessities like access to their health records and prescription information, but also options that let them ask relevant healthcare questions or act as a proxy for their young children. If it doesn’t offer what your patients want, it’s not going to interest them.
2. Make Life Easy
Patients also won’t be happy with a portal that’s inconvenient or difficult to use. The portal should be making life easier for your patients, not harder. So, a responsive design is crucial, to make sure patients can access the portal no matter what device they’re using – and creating an app is great for patients who need to check their health details on the go. And, to be even more convenient, your portal should enable your patients to schedule appointments online or renew prescriptions that have run out.
3. Get Personal
Another great way to encourage your patients to use your portal is to offer personalized news or information to them through the portal. A study found that 44% of Millennials would be interested in receiving personalized healthcare information through a portal. Since you already have their medical history, it’s simple to personalize a page for them, and your healthcare organization will see results.
4. Test It Out
Once you’ve got all the previous parts down, you have to make sure it’s all working the way it’s supposed to. A great way to do this is to find people outside your organization who can test the portal to see if it’s helpful and intuitive. And, consider allowing your patients to offer feedback so you can ensure you’re keeping them happy.
5. Promote!
All this effort you’re putting into making your portal perfect doesn’t matter if nobody is using it! Make sure your patients know about the portal, and that they know it can improve their healthcare experience. Take advantage of great healthcare marketing strategies, like creating an email campaign, to raise awareness.
A patient portal is just the thing to help your healthcare organization with its marketing, so don’t wait to get started! These tips can help you make sure your patients will fall in love with not only your portal, but also your healthcare organization.
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