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Patient Portals 2015
Who’s Driving Meaningful Patient Interaction?
Author
Coray Tate
Current Time Inside Cache Tag Helper: 11/26/2021 8:19:36 PM and Model.reportId = 971
Today’s meaningful use requirement of patient portal access by 5% of patients is confirmed to be a fairly low bar, but a more challenging future is just beginning. Value-based care is forcing patient portals to evolve from being tools for reactive compliance to instruments that allow patients to proactively engage in their care. This report analyzes three flavors of portals (enterprise, ambulatory, and agnostic) and shows which vendors have proven to best meet current needs while also developing solutions for a more strategic tomorrow.1. EPIC, ATHENAHEALTH ARE THE STRONGEST PERFORMERS
Among fully rated vendors, Epic and athenahealth continue to provide the best overall customer experience. Both are highly rated in functionality, patient adoption, and vendor guidance. A trend toward rising expectations led five of eight ranked vendors to drop significantly in performance over the last year. Customers demand closure of functionality gaps, easier interoperability, and more responsive service. Only Medfusion and NextGen showed notable year-over-year improvements.
2. MEDFUSION MOST HELPFUL IN DRIVING PATIENT ADOPTION
Providers running athenahealth, Epic, and Medfusion report that their vendors are most effective in helping them drive patient adoption. All three vendors had 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%. Most providers running other vendors are also getting over the 5% bar, but by a narrower margin.
3. PATIENT ADOPTION DRIVEN BY ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONALITY AND MANUAL EFFORT
The most popular way to meet the meaningful use Stage 2 requirement for patient data access is to pressure patients to sign up at the point of care. Some providers have even hired staff especially for that purpose, but adoption rates remain relatively low. The most effective way to encourage patient adoption is to offer functionality that patients find useful. Portals like athenahealth, Epic, and Medfusion that offer strong administrative functionality (such as billing and self-scheduling) that saves time for patients’ families get the highest levels of patient adoption.
4. INFLUENCE HEALTH AND RELAYHEALTH ARE FOUND IN THE MOST DIVERSE EMR SETTINGS.
Influence Health and RelayHealth are tackling the most difficult task of consolidating data feeds from multiple EMRs into a single portal, but only RelayHealth appears to be meeting customers’ needs. Allscripts and Medfusion are ranked highest among EMR-agnostic vendors, but Allscripts’ overall score has dropped nine points under the strain of new business, while Medfusion has improved under new management. Both are being used in less diverse settings.
Designer
Natalie Jamison
This material is copyrighted. Any organization gaining unauthorized access to this report will be liable to compensate KLAS for the full retail price. Please see the KLAS DATA USE POLICY for information regarding use of this report. © 2021 KLAS Research, LLC. All Rights Reserved. NOTE: Performance scores may change significantly when including newly interviewed provider organizations, especially when added to a smaller sample size like in emerging markets with a small number of live clients. The findings presented are not meant to be conclusive data for an entire client base.