Create a Patient Portal In 3 Steps

How to Create a Patient Portal

A patient portal is an online platform that provides patients with easy access to their health details, appointment information, medical records, and other essential documents. It also allows healthcare providers to efficiently monitor and manage their patient relationships.

It serves as a centralized hub where healthcare providers and patients can oversee medical compliance, track health metrics, and improve communication between all parties involved.

Essential Features for a Patient Portal

These fundamental features provide a solid foundation for building an effective patient portal.

One of the most critical features is user authentication and access control. A secure login system with multi-level access ensures that only authorized users can access specific parts of the portal.

This includes the ability for administrators to create and manage user profiles, reset passwords, and update contact information.

The patient portal should provide real-time access to essential metrics like appointment schedules, medical records, and lab results. Functionalities for monitoring, reporting, communication, and access to historical data are crucial.

Additionally, offering tools for analytics and reporting, such as patient trends, medical history details, and treatment analysis, is vital.

Integration with other internal systems, such as EMRs (Electronic Medical Records), can further enhance the portal’s usefulness.

Build or Buy Your Patient Portal

When it comes to implementing a patient portal, healthcare providers face a crucial decision: should you build a custom solution or buy an off-the-shelf product?

If you build one using Five, you can develop exactly what you need without unnecessary bloat, tailored to your healthcare organization’s specific requirements. Best of all, with our ready-to-use Patient Database, you get a preconfigured web application that has all the essential features, such as authentication, patient management, and appointment tracking preconfigured.

Off-the-shelf patient portal solutions may not offer the same level of data privacy or customization options.

Building a secure patient portal becomes much simpler with Five. Five allows you to customize your patient portal to meet your specific needs.

Creating a Patient Portal Can Be Easy

Building patient portals used to be a complex task requiring extensive coding knowledge.

Healthcare providers often had to hire “expert developers,” which could lead to high costs and subpar results. Customizations were difficult, often requiring additional development work.

Fortunately, times have changed. Creating patient portals is now much easier with rapid portal builders like Five. These tools simplify the process, making it quicker and more accessible.

With Five, you can jump right in and have your patient portal built and running in a single afternoon. While there is still a learning curve, this approach is far more efficient than traditional methods.

Preview the Patient Database 
Store Patient Data Securely in an Intuitive Database Application

How to Create a Patient Portal

Here’s how you can create a patient portal using Five, along with some prerequisites to consider.

With your patient database in place, here are three simple steps you can take to enhance and customize it.

Step 1: Preview the Patient Database Application

Why reinvent the wheel and start from scratch if the basics are in place already? Our ready-to-use Patient Database Application comes preconfigured with all essential features, such as secure logins for internal practice staff and patients, dashboards and automated appointment requests.

Available as a free preview, you can browse our application and discover its features in your own time. With a paid subscription, you get access to your own version of the application, including the ability to customize it and make it fit your way of managing patients.

In step 2, we map out any necessary enhancements and customizations to the patient database.

Step 2: Map Out Database Enhancements and Customizations

Start by compiling a complete list of all attributes relevant to your patients. Think about what matters to your patients and your practice: patients’ personal particulars, emergency contact information, medical history, addresses, prescriptions, etc. Your patient database should be a “single source of truth”, so ensure it’s as comprehensive as possible.

Here are some must-have attributes that are typically included in a patient database or clinic management system. Most of these are already included in our patient database – but if you find any pieces of information missing, they can easily be added to the database in a matter of minutes.

• Patient ID,
• First Name,
• Last Name,
• Email,
• Phone,
• Address,
• Gender,
• Appointments,
• Reason for Visit,
• Diagnosis,
• Treatment,
• Prescriptions,
• Billing Information

Also, compile a complete list of all attributes relevant to your patient portal. Consider what matters to your healthcare organization and its patients: appointment schedules, medical records, lab results, communication tools, etc.

Your patient portal should serve as a “single source of truth,” so ensure it’s as comprehensive as possible.

Here are some must-have attributes that are typically included in a patient portal. Again, some of these you will already find preconfigured in our ready-to-use Patient Database.

• User authentication and access control
• Appointment scheduling and tracking
• Access to medical records and lab results
• Communication tools for patient interactions
• Integration with EMRs and healthcare systems
• Reporting and analytics features

Step 3: Make the Patient Portal Yours

Unlike other off-the-shelf systems, our patient database solution is configurable. With your list of enhancements and customizations ready, it’s time to make the patient database yours.

By using our pre-built database as a foundation, you can rapidly add new features, such as:

✅ Custom dashboards for tracking patients’ medical or appointment history
✅ Custom reports for weekly, monthly or quarterly practice reporting
✅ Custom user roles for internal staff, such as front desk staff and doctors
✅ Integrations with other systems for accurate scheduling or billing
✅ Custom reminders by email or text message for patients to schedule follow-up appointments or attend scheduled appointments

Remember: apart from storing information about your patients and who they are, your patient database is supposed to let you manage your clinic more effectively and reduce paperwork. All of this can be done in our intuitive patient database, which gives you the perfect starting point to professionalize your practice management.

Conclusion: Building a Patient Portal

A well-designed patient portal is essential for any healthcare provider looking to provide patients with easy access to their health details and for providers to monitor and manage their patient relationships effectively.

With modern tools like Five, the process of creating a custom patient portal has become more accessible than ever. The perfect starting point: our ready-to-use Patient Database.

Healthcare providers no longer need to rely on expensive developers or settle for one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead, they can rapidly build and deploy a patient portal that truly serves their unique needs.