Can AI Make the Patient Portal More User-Friendly?

Oracle is unveiling AI tools that help patients better manage their healthcare journey through the patient portal. It's a strategy many providers are embracing as they look to improve their digital front door.

Healthcare leaders often talk--and not always kindly--about the patient portal being the digital front door to the health system. Now AI is giving both them and their patients reason to be hopeful.

Oracle’s unveiling of AI tools designed for the patient portal during last week’s Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit in Orlando is the latest step in a reworking of what many feel is a clunky and ineffective platform. Company officials say this is a good example of AI being put to use for the consumer or patient.

“Just giving the answer isn’t good enough any more,” Seema Verma, Oracle Health’s EVP and GM, said during last week’s summit. Both on stage and during an interview later on, she talked of the interactive power of AI, in that it not only responds to queries but can also provide context and other information to help patients. That might mean responding to a question about medication, detailing co-pay and coverage responsibilities, scheduling an appointment and providing directions to the right location, even arranging transportation or tips on better nutrition.

Hospitals Have Them, But Patients Aren't Unsing Them

Nationally, some 90% of healthcare systems offer patient portals, primarily to allow patients to access EHR data. Yet only 15% to 30% of patients actually use those digital platforms. Complaints range from inefficient portal design to a lack of information and access to services a patient really wants, like scheduling, prescription refills, insurance coverage and payment information, and even virtual visits.

Driven by a need to be more patient-friendly, as well as studies that indicate patient portals can improve a number of key measurables, including engagement, care management and quality of care, health systems and hospitals are working to improve their portals. And EHR providers like Epic and Oracle Health are giving them the tools they need to make those improvements.

Ryan McFarland, a physician and Medical Director of Hudson Physicians, a 60-provider practice in Hudson, Michigan, said patient portals have been “very limited and clunky, and not at all patient-centered.” This weighs down providers by forcing them to devote staff to maintaining those portals and answering phone calls that could be handled through that portal. He’s looking for AI tools that can reduce the burden on his staff and his doctors, perhaps eliminating the roughly 30 phone calls he takes in a day that aren’t specifically tied to care.

That’s what he’s looking for in a new EHR.

“This has to be something that works for us and isn’t just a billing platform,” he said. “It has to be good at [eliminating] what gets in the way of care. Time to treat is a huge expense for us, and anything that disrupts that, that disrupts your revenue cycle and your workflows, then you’re losing revenue and disrupting care.”

Making the Patrient Portal Go Somewhere Meaningful

Verma emphasized Oracle Health’s efforts to improve patient engagement during her opening keynote last week. She said the company "is working to completely reimagine patient engagement through our new portal, giving patients access to their complete medical record and putting the power of AI in their hands."

They’re not the only ones to see AI as a difference-maker. Healthcare executives in HealthLeaders’ Mastermind program on AI in Clinical Care have been discussing the power of AI to democratize healthcare, giving consumers more power and resources to manage their own care journey. This is prompting hospitals and health systems to rethink their patient engagement activities, beginning with a patient portal that does more than just give out information.

Randy Thompson, MD, Chief Health Analytics Officer at Billings Clinic, said AI is giving the Montana-based health system an opportunity to reimagine how its patients access care through the portal. Now, he said, that portal can be interactive.

“The EHR is finally working for us, rather than us working for the EHR,” he said.

Thompson said AI tools are making the portal more conversational, allowing patients to make a query and then continue with that line of questioning.

These tools aren’t limited to providers. During a session at the Oracle Health Summit, Optum CEO Patrick Conway said they hope to “reduce friction” by having AI agents handle calls to the health plan, providing real-time benefits reviews and other information instead of having staff members scroll through their computers for the data or promise to call or e-mail back as soon as it’s found.

Conway said too much time – and tension between payers and providers – is spent looking for information in disparate places, all of which costs money. By using tools to make that information more easily and quickly accessible, payers can reduce delays that interrupt care.

“The system does need to perform better,” he told Verma during the session.

One issue holding healthcare providers back may be a lack of understanding how AI can improve the patient portal.

“What surprises me the most is the lack of imagination,” said Kristen Miles, VP of Healthcare Product Strategy at Oracle Health. She said both providers often think of administrative tasks and other portal services as “mundane” activities that get in the way of actually healthcare, while patients see those tasks as annoying.

Miles said providers should understand that AI can handle those tasks, and by integrating AI into the patient portal they can reduce or even eliminate the hangups and delays that keep patients away from the hospital. But they have to know what tools to use.

Helping Patients Understand Their Care Plan

One key element of an AI-infused patient portal is the ability to translate medical terms into language that a patient can understand – a valuable tool, considering reports that 38% of adults have basic or below-basic health literacy skills and only 12% are considered to be proficient.

In her keynote, Serma touted Oracle’s new Semantic Database and Knowledge Graph, tools designed to help patients understand their medical records by translating jargon. The idea is to not only help patients understand what their doctors and nurses are telling them, but also give them the support they need to better prepare for upcoming visits, including helping them ask the right questions of their care team.

This is actually the next step in the ambient AI process. Some companies are developing specific AI scribes that capture the conversation between patients and specialists, such as oncologists, psychiatrists and chronic disease specialists. Those tools have data engines designed to accurately capture complex medical jargon so that it’s entered correctly in the medical record.

Now those tools are being turned around and used to help patients.

“It’s all about navigating the delivery of care,” said Scott Eshowsky, Chief Medical Information Officer for the Beacon Health System, an 11-hospital health system spanning parts of Indiana and Michigan, meaning more than just helping people get to where they’re going. “I would love it if there were an AI-generated set of instructions for patients.”