A recent KLAS report finds vendors athenahealth, Epic and Medfusion are the most effective at helping their customers drive patient portal adoption. The recent KLAS report entitled Patient Portals 2015: Adoption beyond Meaningful Use reveals all three vendors having over half of their customers report that at least 20% of patients have accessed the portal–a number well beyond the meaningful use bar of 5%.
For the report, KLAS interviewed 186 healthcare provider organizations to determine which vendors have proven to best meet current patient portal needs while also developing solutions for a more strategic tomorrow. The report analyzes three flavors of portals:
– enterprise
– ambulatory
– EMR agnostic
The focus of the report is to examine product performance, vendor guidance and other factors that impact providers’ ability to achieve success with patient portal adoption.
“Value-based care is forcing patient portals to evolve from being merely tools for reactive regulatory compliance to becoming valuable instruments that allow patients to proactively engage in their own care,” said report author Coray Tate in a statement. “Providers report that vendor guidance and functionality that patients find useful, such as billing and self-scheduling, are the most effective ways to encourage portal adoption among patients.”
For providers, patient portal adoption can help advance patient engagement and lay a foundation for many care coordination efforts, including meaningful use, Patient-centered Medical Homes and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).