New England Neurological Associates Patient Portal

A patient portal is a secure online website that gives people with cancer user-friendly, 24-hr access to their personal health information from anywhere with an cyberspace connection. Under the recently enacted 21^st
Century Cures Human action, health care organizations must share medical records electronically to all patients. Because of this, health intendance users tin can now read notes recapping their visits to the doctor’s office and look at test results electronically. Most patient portals also include features such equally straight and secure messaging, online appointment scheduling, online bill payments, and online prescription refill requests.

Patient portals can be specially helpful for people who are navigating cancer intendance. For case, people with cancer and survivors frequently crave lifelong follow-upwardly intendance and may have specialized handling and survivorship intendance plans. Some people with cancer may also require close monitoring for treatment-related side effects, also called toxicities, and may need to have frequent lab or imaging tests. All of this tin be more hands managed through the patient portal.

More than importantly, research has shown that advice between patients and their health care teams can pb to meaningful improvements in survival and quality of life. By using electronic records effectively, people with cancer can gain a deeper understanding about their health, develop more trust in their providers, and be better prepared to collaborate with their providers most their care.

Here are some tips for using these patient portals effectively:

1. Understand that sometimes there is too much information with as well little context.
   Sometimes, patients are notified that their test results are available for review, fifty-fifty before their oncologist is able to access those results. This may lead to defoliation and anxiety about your situation. Before you lot access your examination results, talk with your doctor about how and when you’re going to be able to talk over your exam results.

2. If linguistic communication in your portal is unclear, ask questions.
   A lot of the notes in your portal may be written using medical jargon and blunt linguistic communication, as they are meant primarily for a medical audition. However, health intendance providers are trying to use more supportive linguistic communication when making notes in a patient’s chart and are hoping to use less disruptive medical jargon moving forward. If you have questions virtually the information you lot notice in your patient portal, talk with your dr. virtually information technology.

3. Know when to wait a response.
   Most clinics have an established process for answering letters. When you ship a message through your patient portal, a nurse might be responding to other letters and might take to forrad your message to the md for input. Therefore, a response might have upwards to 48 hours. Also recognize that messages from patient portals are often only monitored during normal clinical hours, so messages sent afterwards hours or on weekends will probable not go read until the next working twenty-four hour period.

4. Never ship an urgent message through the portal.
   If yous’re having fevers while on chemotherapy or experience a significant modify in your symptoms from what is typical for you, call the doctor’southward role immediately.

5. Messaging on portals works well for straightforward questions.
   If you want to refill a prescription or enquire a question about managing symptoms, using your patient portal to ship those messages is convenient and uncomplicated. All the same, it’due south very hard to have more than complicated conversations well-nigh prognosis or goals of handling through electronic messaging. Because of this, it is often best to schedule an in-person visit to inquire follow-up questions and learn more about your individual situation.

Electronic medical records are extremely helpful for reviewing what y’all talked about during your in-person visits. They can too aid solidify your understanding of the treatment program. Be sure to take advantage of this resources available to you, and know that nosotros’re learning how to use these technologies together as dr. and patient.