Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use Portal patient instructions question

Can anyone point me to where I find instructions to hand out for patient use of portal? This is for patients who do not have a personal e-mail address, but wished to access portal through someone else's internet access.

I'm not quite sure which you are asking:
1) where to find patient education materials or
2) where to find instructions on how to use the portal.

I think you are asking the first. The simple answer is use control K which will bring up the Amazing Charts Knowledge Base which has a number of sites that have patient education. Of course, there are many others which are not listed on this site (like Epocrates.)

If it is the second question, I do not have a complete answer. I do not know where to get the portal documentation, but if you are using the FREE included portal it DOES NOT include sending forms to emails other than the portal.

Well, what you would do is:

1`) set up a portal account for them. They may(send a question to Updox support) have to put the other person's email address in. Or they can set up a free one on google, yahoo,excite, etc.

2)Provide them their username, password, and the website address. You can get this by printing it in Updox. Note: Every time you print it, it will reset the password.

3) They can then just go to the website and log in.

Apologies for late follow-up. Thanks for replies.

To clarify, I thought I saw somewhere a reference to instructions to the patient, I presumed to print and hand out. I believe it is not a prerequisite for a patient to have an email address to access their health information through a portal. This was particularly relevant to patients interested in participating in portal use, but who used computers of another family member or friend rather than their own, and did not have a personal email address. I was surprised how often this issue came up, usually an offspring or grandchild but occasionally a significant other providing occasional computer access and assistance.

More specifically for MU, I believe one can get credit for providing portal access regardless of patient having their own email address. I understood the requirement was to provide information and instructions about how to access the portal.

Wayne's answer is probably as good as it gets, and that is an important point about the password reset. Thank you.

Don,

What we have done is print screenshots of the process. We signed up a dummy patient and printed up about 5 pages to walk people through the process. We've been handing this out with a cover letter after patients see us for a visit. We then send them the invitation for the portal and their clinical summary.