Patient engagement is crucial for the success of your practice. If the patients are satisfied and feel an important part in their health care process patient outcomes greatly improve. The last thing a practice wants is the bridge of communication breaking.

Patient engagement software supports to improve the overall patient experience through a set of interactive tools and modules. This software is a rapidly-growing segment of the medical software marketplace. The value of the patient engagement market is increasing, noticing a leap from $5.5 billing in 2014 to $13.7 billion in 2019. These statistics reveal that patient engagement software provides the right resources to improve patient communication and manage the patient-provider relationship.

Most patient engagement solutions have a common set of functionalities and features. It is good to be well-informed about the common features present in a top-ranked patient engagement software that enables enhanced communication between the patient and the provider.

Features of a Practice Management EMR Software

  • Secure Messaging Facility – A secure messaging platform provides encrypted two-way communication between the patient and the healthcare practitioner. You should make sure that the communication platform is HIPAA Compliant so patients feel secure about sharing sensitive medical data and information.
  • Patient Registration – The patient registration feature allows patients to easily fill out new patient forms electronically and provide immunization data and health history without a hassle.
  • Patient Scheduling – The patient engagement software system has a patient scheduling functionality that allows patients to book appointments online with their preferred clinician. They are able to make an appointment by looking at the available time slots. Once the appointment is confirmed a confirmation message or email is sent to the patient.
  • Appointment Reminders – Appointment reminders and alerts through email and recorded messages helps to combat the issue of no shows and missed appointments. Also, the staff members are free of making reminder calls to patients and focus on other administrative tasks.
  • Prescription Refills – Refills can be requested via the patient engagement software solution. This saves up a lot of time as the need for unnecessary appointments is eliminated.
  • Online Bill Payment and Statements – The online bill payment features aids patients to conveniently pay on a secure platform. Online statements can also be received and this feature saves the practice money and offers more opportunities for self-pay patients.
  • Patient Education – Patient education resources and material is available via the patient portal platform. Clinicians can select specific medical content for specific patients with similar health conditions.

This Year’s Best Patient engagement software vendors

  1. athenaOne by athenahealth
  2. NexTech Patient Portal by Nextech Systems
  3. PatientPop
  4. Xia Health

Additional Concerns

All the above-mentioned patient engagement software solutions have the functionalities mentioned in earlier the article to offer complete benefits to the medical practice. It is important that as a potential buyer you make sure that the patient engagement software system is HIPAA Compliant and should satisfy Meaningful-Use requirements. Whatever system you choose should also offer a mobile application to enhance accessibility and effectiveness