The Patient Portal to the Future

Telephone calls, snail mail, and face-to-face visits still have their place, but patient portals are an increasingly important vehicle for patient-provider communications. 

"Many healthcare organizations have it on their to-do lists: Launch a patient portal and figure out how to get patients to use it as their primary way to communicate with clinicians and administrative staff. (...) Clinicians often resist yet another change to their work processes and fear patients will be confused by the data pushed to them through a portal. Patients are accustomed to calling the hospital or physician’s office with questions, so a portal is not their top-of-mind mode of communication. However, research shows that more and more patients are beginning to use—or willing to try—portals and other technologies to communicate with providers ..."

This article get into the details of this current challenge.