Many behavioral health organizations get frustrated when they invest a lot of time and energy into selecting an EMR with an amazing patient portal feature only to see patient after patient refuse to engage with the portal at all. We know this isn’t just an inconvenience for the provider. Without patient portal use, treatment planning, medication management, patient-provider communication and alumni engagement all suffer. 

Today, we’ll examine what it is that is leading to such low patient portal engagement among addiction treatment patients and what behavioral health organizations can do to get more patients to log on and connect with the resources available to them through their patient portal. 

First, Which Addiction Treatment Patients are Most Likely to Use Patient Portals? 

A systematic review of nearly 3500 patients found that there are some qualities that are associated with the tendency to log on and actually use patient portals. For starters, women and older people report higher “utilization rates” than younger people and men. Patient portal use is also positively correlated with higher income patients, patients with higher education and patients who identify as White. 

What are Some of the Key Barriers That Stop Most Addiction Treatment Patients from Engaging with Patient Portals?

There’s a few different barriers that come up again and again when speaking with addiction treatment patients about their patient portal use. 

High speed internet access is a key factor in determining which patients feel like logging into a patient portal is worth their time. For example, in rural areas, where cell reception and broadband are difficult to access, you can expect patient portal adoption numbers to be low. For these patients, portal-based messaging and other “amenities” are actually an inconvenience. 

Many patients share that they are concerned about privacy when it comes to patient portals and apps associated with the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry. These patients may be slow to adopt patient portal use if they don’t receive reassurance that their personal health information (PHI) is safe and that their patient portal conforms to strict HIPAA standards.

A majority of patients take a passive approach to health management and this, too, can lead to low patient portal usage numbers. When a patient perceives themselves as a recipient of healthcare services, and isn’t taught to understand themselves as a key player in their overall health, they’re less likely to log into patient portals or spend time outside appointments actively engaging with their treatment plan. While this passive approach to health management is less pronounced in the addiction treatment space than it is in other healthcare specialties, it is still nonetheless a potent barrier to patient portal engagement.

Finally, some patients simply report that they are too busy to use patient portals. 

When Addiction Treatment Patients do Engage with Patient Portals, What is it That Draws Them In? 

Studies have shown that patients respond well when given a “good reason” to log into their patient portals. This makes sense. Giving patients a strong incentive for logging into their portal will make them more likely to do so. 

Some key drivers behind portal engagement include: 

• Accessibility from any device

• The ability to receive and review test results 

• Gamified results tracking that lets patients plot their treatment progress

• Viewable progress notes and treatment plans (especially when they’ve been created using concurrent documentation workflows)

• Easy, quick and responsive messaging with providers  

Our Top Tips for Boosting Patient Portal Engagement 

Increasing patient portal engagement isn’t a one-time event. It involves incorporating portal promotion into your existing addiction treatment program in concrete ways that prove the value of portal use to your patients. 

Here’s our top tips for boosting portal engagement: 

Tip #1: Include information about the benefits of your patient portal into your new patient orientation 

Some patients will voluntarily log into their portal and begin engaging, but most won’t without some gentle encouragement. Including a segment on the patient portal into your new patient orientation - what it is, why it’s important, how often you should log in - helps set expectations for new admits from the beginning. 

Tip #2: Include hands-on instruction in patient portal use for new admits 

Many people are visual and experiential learners. Addiction treatment patients tend to need new, productive behaviors and lifeskills modeled for them more so than patients without SUD. Executive functioning issues are very common among people who struggle with addiction. It’s also not uncommon for people who began using at a young age to have missed developmental milestones linked to “adult” skills that people who don’t struggle with addiction take for granted. For all of these reasons, it’s not unreasonable to sit new admits down, log into their patient portal, and explore the benefits and features available to them there together. Many patients respond well to this kind of hands-on support. 

Tip #3: Establish expectations for alumni portal use before patients conclude their treatment episode at your facility

Explicitly share with patients your program’s expectations around alumni portal engagement. Explain to them how the alumni portal is a lifeline to continuing care, should they need additional help to cope with triggers or relapse in the future. Direct patients to review their relapse prevention plan on the alumni portal at least once a month, if not more frequently, while in the maintenance phase of recovery. Stress the importance of responding to update notifications and check-ins so that their ongoing recovery progress can be tracked and integrated into your program’s outcomes data. Let patients know that their alumni engagement helps refine treatment for the next cohort and makes recovery even more attainable for the patients who will come after them. After all, stronger alumni engagement means stronger addiction treatment outcomes.

Behave Health: Your Problem-Solving Addiction Treatment EHR

Behave Health is committed to making it easier - and more profitable - to operate evidence-based, results-focused addiction treatment centers.

Our all-in-one app puts clinical, administration, staff, admissions, alumni, residents, treatment plans, billing, insurance authorizations and more - all at your fingertips.

Get your free trial started today and see why more addiction treatment centers prefer Behave Health.

PS. Just getting started with behavioral health? Need help with certification, too? Behave Health can also help direct you to the right resources for help with Licensing or Accreditation by either The Joint Commission or CARF. Mention to your product specialist that you’re interested in this service after you start your free trial!