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Outpatient Therapy

Grow Your Rehab Therapy Practice Using Paid Ads and Search Engine Marketing

When done right, paid advertising and search engine marketing are amazing tools to reach new patients and grow your business. By applying several basic tactics, you can start using powerful digital advertising platforms like Google and Facebook to target specific audiences and help ensure a steady flow of business for your practice. Click to View […]

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Five Key Stressors Hospice Professionals Face, with Guidance for Support

Hospice professionals help others face death and loss, while juggling interdisciplinary communications, quality compliance regulations and ever-evolving technologies. You are continually there for families and their dear ones who are passing away. But what about you? Get the eBook In caregiving professions, it is easy to get swept up in the needs of others and forget […]

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Leadership

Net Health’s CIO discusses diversity and how it can build a stronger organization

Diversity in the workplace is an on-going issue but it’s an issue with solutions. To build diversity, it takes forward-thinking initiatives, a reexamination of the hiring philosophy, and the support of the company’s decision-makers.  One such supporter of diversity in the workplace is Net Health’s CIO, Jason “JJ” James.  Recent social movements like Black Lives […]

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Tough Questions | Real Answers: Net Health’s Fireside Chat about Race

Net Health did something different recently. Nearly two hundred employees and their families gathered around their computer screens to take part in a landmark event in our company’s history – we called it a “Fireside Chat about Race”.  The purpose of this event was to have a truly open conversation about the controversial but relevant […]

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Blog Posts Optimize Your Patient Portal and Streamline Your Workflows
Wound Care

Optimize Your Patient Portal and Streamline Your Workflows

July 2, 2020 by Cathy Hess , BSN, RN, CWCN, VP, Chief Clinical Officer for Wound Care

The novel coronavirus pandemic has radically changed our personal and professional lives, perhaps forever. The lessons learned in these last few months have made us stop, think, and change how we move forward and communicate with one another and our patients. One of these changes has been the opportunity to implement telemedicine and telehealth. These services are clearly defined within the CMS Interim Final Rule updated on April 30, 2020.

Based on the new and updated regulations, healthcare providers are given the opportunity to manage patients remotely and deliver care at a distance when appropriate. The communication may be synchronous, using a videoconferencing feature, or asynchronous, allowing both the patient and provider to interact on their own timeline perhaps through an online portal.

A patient portal is defined as a secure website that gives patients convenient, 24-hour access to their personal health information from anywhere with an internet connection. This tool provides patient engagement through videoconferencing; secure online messaging; and the ability to receive test results, request prescriptions, review documentation, and so on. Information shared within the secure portal in this collaborative approach can mitigate and triage the patient’s health concerns (review the June Practice Points column, Triaging Telehealth in Wound Care: Embracing the Regulations within Your Workflows).

Providing continuity of care through patient engagement strategies such as a patient portal is the basis of an e-visit. Although a patient may use his/her portal along the continuum of any visit type, patient adoption of this technology may not be easy. Research has demonstrated that patients’ interest and ability to use patient portals is strongly influenced by personal factors such age, ethnicity, education level, health literacy, health status, and role as a caregiver. In addition, even if patients have an interest, they may not have access to the internet or a computer or smartphone. These barriers are real and need to be discussed when speaking with the patient while assisting him/her with portal adoption.

Five Steps to Optimize Your Patient Portal

This list, although not exhaustive, will assist you to set up your patient portal. It is important that you work through your department’s portal adoption process to ensure compliance is met at every step along the way. Consider these five steps to optimize and streamline your workflow:

  1. Set up your department’s patient portal and create time to respond to messages

    Setting up your patient portal involves several steps, including the creation of a portal message. Although setup is generally guided by your department’s or hospital’s process, the portal message may be unique to your department and needs to be created by you for the specific patient population you serve. The message is important because it greets patients when they sign into the portal and provides them with the next steps to contact your department or office. It can be as simple or detailed as desired. You may want to provide office hours, phone numbers to reach the department, information about when to call the department, and/or directions in case of an emergency. The message can also set patient expectations around receiving a response from a clinical staff member or provider after logging a question or concern. Having this information in writing and setting clear expectations for the patient are the start of your communication and patient engagement.

From a clinical workflow perspective, understanding who is responsible for reviewing the online portal questions as well as where and when this work will be completed is important. Clinicians typically build in a few designated times to reply to secure messages during the day. Answering patients’ questions takes time, empathy, and a focused understanding that an online tool cannot take the place of in-person conversations. Sometimes, the question may be best answered with a phone call or in-person visit. Clinical staff should be educated about when these options are more appropriate than a written reply.


To read the full article in “Advances in Skin & Wound Care” by Cathy Thomas Hess, click here.

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About the Author

Cathy Hess , BSN, RN, CWCN

VP, Chief Clinical Officer for Wound Care

Cathy oversees clinical and professional services for Net Health. Cathy gained over 25 years of expertise in various acute care, long-term care, sub-acute care facilities, home-health agencies, and outpatient wound care department settings. She is the author of The Clinical Wound Manager™ Manual Series, Clinical Guide to Skin and Wound Care – Seventh Edition (also translated into Italian and Portuguese).


See all posts by Cathy Hess , BSN, RN, CWCN

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