Patient portals and digital patient engagement stymie many healthcare providers, especially small ones with few resources. Community Health Alliance (CHA) a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) serving 27,000+ patients in Reno, Nevada, is using an old-school way to encourage use of its online patient portal – by having in-person conversations about it.
Healthcare IT Today sat down with Carlos Aros, Director of Operations at Community Health Alliance to find out how they are driving the adoption of and engagement their patient portal.
Adoption Though Conversation
CHA uses eClinicalWorks as their EHR. In 2021 they rolled out the eClinicalWorks online patient portal to allow patients to securely access their medical records and communicate with their care team. The CHA team worked hard to “make the portal relevant” to patients, but as adoption slowly ramped up, the CHA team realized that they needed to put in more effort to get patients to enroll and use the portal.
“Our patients responded when we talked to them about enrolling them,” explained Aros. “We made the portal relevant to the conversation with them. For example, we would explain to them that if they can’t make it to their appointment, you can just send us a message through the portal and we can reschedule it or cancel it. Same thing if you need to get an important message to your doctor.”
CHA has trained their staff to “talk up” the portal with patients, where appropriate. They remind patients to enroll and use the portal whenever they visit. These brief conversations help ensure that the portal stays on the patient’s radar. Everyone at CHA is bought in, because they know that every patient that uses the portal is one less who will call into their contact center which means better service for those who do not have Internet access. It’s a win for everyone involved.
Text Surveys
CHA is also leveraging eClinicalWorks to push surveys to their patients via text.
“We send out around 6,700 text message each month with a link to a post-visit survey,” shared Aros. “Through that, we get quantitative and actionable feedback. In fact, when patients tell us through those surveys that they had a negative experience, we follow up with them and do service recovery.”
The surveys are available in English and in Spanish.
Watch the interview with Carlos Aros, for more about portals, surveys, and advice for federally qualified health centers.
Learn more about Community Health Alliance: https://www.chanevada.org/
Learn more about eClinicalWorks: https://www.eclinicalworks.com/
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