Patient Portal Question

[Amanda]

Hi everyone -
Do you all know where I can find information regarding the patient portal?  Is there a separate company that I need to contact to get that up and running or is it something already embedded in Crystal pm?  Thanks!

[mjhervey]

It is under admin/website. Click on the link at the top and takes you there. We added a portal button to our website for our patient's to get there easier. I don't believe there was any setup other than getting it on our website.

[friscoeyeassociates]

Yes, it is a feature that is provided by Crystal and included in your package if you're a customer. Currently you are not able to customize its appearance or function really at all. As mentioned above, the link can be found in the admin section under the website tab. The link at the top of that page is the link patients need to go to log in, and we also just added a button on our website the says patient portal and links to that address.

In order to use the portal your staff will need to initiate a user name and password for patients. This is done from inside the patient's chart in the "files" tab. Click the "online portal" button, and a small green box will come up. Here you can either enter a custom user name and password or press the "default" button to have the software do this for you. I recommend using default usernames and passwords and not letting patients customize them, as the software will ensure no two patients have same user or password.

Lastly you will need to give patients the credentials somehow. We have the credentials print out on our invoice, which can be customized in Admin>Invoices

[jane]

 Is there a more private way to give them the credentials?  Usernames and passwords being printed and handed out seems risky for privacy reasons.  Thanks.

[erica]

Jun 11, 2018 10:05:22 GMT -6 jane said:

 Is there a more private way to give them the credentials?  Usernames and passwords being printed and handed out seems risky for privacy reasons.  Thanks.

If you have a gmail account, we can integrate it with Crystal.
This allows you to email them the URL/username and password.

If you are interested, go to support->request support at the top of Crystal.
You will need your gmail username and password.

[friscoeyeassociates]

It's my understanding that having it printed and handed out on the receipt at time of exam is one of the only concrete and HIPAA compliant ways to ensure that information is only in the hands of the patient or guardian. Actually, it's my understanding that HIPAA regulations actually prohibit the use of regular email clients as a means of sharing protected health information. This is one, if not the main, reason the patient portal even exists. Therefore the invoice seems to be one of the most logical places put this information in my opinion, given that its a document that already contains protected health information like patient name, DOB, diagnosis etc... and the staff generally only hands the invoice to the patient them-self or their guardian in person.

I do think that emailing the credentials is a bit of a work around the HIPAA regulation, but I havn't heard of any cases where that caused an audit of some kind so I assume its probably ok?? Kind of a grey area I think.

[jane]

Thank you for the information. One other question: is uploading just the clinical summary sufficient for MIPS? We prefer not to upload the entire record. It is long and messy when it shows on the portal.

[friscoeyeassociates]

So my understanding is that the clinical summary is an electronic document meant to be used and shared electronically between clinicians in referral situations. This is in fact one of two measures that practices are scored on in the "Promoting Interoperability" category of MIPS (Formerly Advancing Care Information category). To attest a clinician needs to either electronically receive or request a clinic summary in a referral scenario with at least one patient during the reporting period in order to attest to the "Request/Accept Summary of Care" OR to attest to the "Send Summary of Care" measure in a scenario where your practice is referring out... I believe the measure you are referring to would be "View, Download, Transmit" measure in which a patient needs to be able to view, download and transmit their medical records via an application like the patient portal. In this case I do not believe the clinical summary would suffice. It needs to be a complete version of their encounter.

As you mentioned, the record upload feature in Crystal is clunky in its output. It basically follows the layout of your record template, and thus many boxes and fields appear disorganized as a result. Currently the only way I know to combat the issue is to create a "Microsoft Word Template" that you can customize to your exact preferences. This will take someone a lot of time of the front end to get together as you must manually input field data for each field onto the word template. Once done however you will have a much neater document to upload/print out, but it does require an extra step of exporting the data to a word document first.

For us, we upload the Crystal version because most patients don't ever request or need a full exam summary so its of little consequence that the Crystal version is not perfectly organized. That and the ease of just clicking the built in upload med rec button in Crystal. We only upload a cleaner version if a patient calls to request a copy themselves. We know the crystal version is not that useful for the patient given it's disorganization but it satisfies the MIPS measure so we cover ourselves there, and a patient or provider can call at any time to request a different document be uploaded. Which brings up an even bigger issue in that these programs are meant to improve healthcare outcomes on a broad basis, but like many things in life the nuance is what really matters and makes or breaks an idea. Sometimes, like in this scenario with the government initiative MIPS, although ideologically well meaning and maybe even productive when accounted for as a whole, the nuance and individual patient needs can be overlooked to some degree. Basically, I wouldn't undermine the efficiency of your office by opting to upload neater documents just for the heck of it. I definitely think Crystal could do some work to improve the way it uploads, but I also think that it would be more of a disservice to patients to give unneeded attention to a problem that almost all of them don't care about if that makes any sense. I think the best solution is some combo of both where you upload what is necessary and easy for every patient for the purposes of MIPS even if disorganized, and of course offer alternatives to those patients who ask.

Crystal also has a staff member dedicated to helping clients understand and attest to MIPS. I believe his name is James. Might be worth reaching out to him, particularly before you attest at the end of the year. 

[agarofolo]

We can up load the patient's spectacle rx to the portal, but there is not signature on it. What is the use of this then? The patient cannot use it, right? I can print off the Rx, add the signature, then scan it in and upload it... Is there an more direct way for uploading the Rx to the portal? Thanks

[friscoeyeassociates]

You can add a signature to it by checking the "Add signature from employee page" box when printing. See photo attached

[KizerOpt]

Jun 20, 2018 9:45:39 GMT -6 agarofolo said:

We can up load the patient's spectacle rx to the portal, but there is not signature on it. What is the use of this then? The patient cannot use it, right? I can print off the Rx, add the signature, then scan it in and upload it... Is there an more direct way for uploading the Rx to the portal? Thanks

If the checkbox doesn't work for you, print to Crystal PM printer and select Add File and Upload at the bottom of the window. 

Karen

[caitlin]

Is it possible to upload a patient's Rx without saving a PDF and then uploading it? Can this be done directly from Crystal?

[erica]

You can use the PDF printer. This basically saves the file as a PDF in their files section. Right click on the file and upload it to the portal.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcva8_pbj-o&list=UUuqogbYfaVzRo28zXIKlmRw