Home Health and Hospice Industry News and Blog

What to Look For in Physician Portal Software for Home Health Care

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by Corey Fletcher and True Nguyen

In our previous post, we defined what a physician portal is and what it does.  We also described and compared two types of portals that exist today - software dependent vs. independent.  In this post, we want to give you some things to look for and things to consider avoiding in physician portals.

Things to look for:

• Easy to use for agencies and physicians
• Single login for physicians to access multiple agencies documentation
• Allows different document types to be sent (software generated, hand written, photos, etc.)
• Allows two-way communication between agencies and physicians (i.e. secure email)
• Allows agencies and physicians to electronically sign all documents if necessary
• Allows physicians to capture time increments for Care Plan Oversight Billing
• Report modules for both agencies and physicians
• Allows physicians to send referrals through the portal
• Document archiving for both agencies and physicians
• Document integration with 3^rd party software
• Notifications to agency personnel and physicians in the form of email or text messages
• A company with a strong reputation for providing excellent products, services, and support to its clients.

Thing to consider avoiding:

• Software specific portals – limits physician access to all of their agencies
• Non web-based applications
• Companies offering physicians portals that are not in the healthcare field
• Companies that charge physicians for the service
• Companies that will not help in the sales/marketing effort of the product
• Companies that do not offer separate agreements for both agencies and physicians

When choosing a physician portal, it is important to determine your needs as an agency, as well as, evaluating the needs of your physicians.  And regardless of the type of portal you choose, the key to your success is the adoption and utilization of the physician portal by your physicians.  If you are interested in learning more about physician portals or about HEALTHCAREfirst's independent physician portal, firstCPO, please contact us.