Taking health to the next level with Patient Family Portals
In the digital age, platforms such as EHRs, smartphone apps and much more are positively impacting the healthcare industry and streamlining and improving the way that physicians care for patients. Such platforms have also proven to be enormously beneficial in the fight to keep patients and their families informed about their health care.
With the changing healthcare continuum and increasing health awareness among the masses, it has become important to share a transparent relationship with the patients and their families.
Although it can be hard sometimes considering the challenges in a healthcare organization, still the benefit of taking an honest approach towards this is superior.
To refocus healthcare system on the people, it will require a renewed attention to how patients, families and care providers access health information and manage patient’s health.
In long-term patient care scenarios, patient’s family and care providers are the major managers of the care hence for effective decision-making, it is necessary to share, update and educate patient’s family about all the health-related information of the patient.
Benefits of Patient Family Portal
- Care transparency – Sharing of patient’s health information and plans with the family will ensure a transparent care environment with better understanding between patient family and care providers
- Building Trust – Engaging the patient’s family in the healthcare plan of the patient ensures building of the trust between care providers and patient family which helps in better decision-making
- Shorter Billing & Collection Cycle – With regular updates on the care plans and payments, patient’s family can easily track the payment status and can pay online with easy payment options enhancing the cash flow management
- Better Payment Options – Multi optional online payment options can help the patient’s family to split the bill among them as per their convenience which again ensures timely payments.
Digitization in healthcare has lead to many operational benefits in an organization along with patient and family’s engagement in the patient’s health. Some portals also provide additional options like the flexibility to add more than one family member. To break the stereotypes associated with long-term care facilities especially aged care homes, it is necessary to keep all those associated with these facilities, at pace with the continuous changes in the dynamic healthcare continuum. Hence it is time to rethink about and adopt better long-term care solutions which can support facilities achieve these goals.
— By Savita Prashar, Product Marketing, Napier Healthcare Solutions
