Suppose you are already using a patient portal and want to understand how good it is. The easiest way to do this is to experience it yourself. Just go through the customer journey as a patient and evaluate how it works.

Here are the points you may check:

1) Starting points

2) Appointment booking

3) Notifications

4) Communication

For each point, you may analyze subjective and objective components. Subjective: how do you feel about each particular topic? Objective:  what do you see in your analytical reports?

1. Find all starting points

You need to understand how easily your patients reach the portal. There may be more than one starting point and many routes to get there, so check them all.

Subjective: 

Check how easy it is to register for new clients. How easy is it to log in and recover the password in case of need?

Objective:

Check your analytics system about the routes to get inside the portal your clients are using. What are the most popular ones if there is more than one starting point? Can you check the percentage of clients who started the login process and did not finish it?

2. Book an appointment

Make a booking. Then, try to reschedule it and eventually try canceling it. You will see how easy and intuitive the process is and how much time it takes.

Subjective: 

Is it easy and intuitive? Are your required to enter any data which you already entered before? Are there any chances you may make a mistake when doing it?

Objective:

How many clients started the booking process and abandoned it? Then check your records in other systems to ensure they completed the process by other means (if not, it may be lost revenue for your practice).

How many appointments do the patients book via the portal compared to the total number? Is the percentage of online bookings growing over time, or is it stable?

3. Check notifications

What automatic notifications do you receive from the portal?

Subjective:

Do these notifications grab attention? Or do they get lost among other emails and texts? Are the messages easy to read? Are they convincing?

Objective:

What percentage of emails do the patients open? What is the conversion rate of emails which need to convince patients to book an appointment?

4. Talk to your office via the portal.

Think about what inquiries you typically receive from your clients. Can they send it via the portal, or do they need to call reception? 

Subjective:

Is the process simple and intuitive? Will you be conveniently notified about the answer from the practice?

Objective:

How many inquiries do you receive via the portal? Try to compare it to the number of questions from your patients you receive via the phone.

Does your practice answer all the inquiries? What is the average answer time?