Switching EHR or Patient Portal Systems? 3 Problems to Plan For (and How to Prevent Them)
Switching EHR or Patient Portal Systems? 3 Problems to Plan For (and How to Prevent Them)
Switching EHR or patient portal systems is never as seamless as the vendor promises. Whether you run a private practice, a group of practices, or a hospital, expect three problems: front-office staff who aren’t ready to support the new portal, patients who don’t sign up, and clinicians fielding tech questions instead of delivering care. All three are predictable, which means all three can be planned for.
A patient portal that gives patients easy access to their health records is no longer a nice-to-have. In 2024, 77% of U.S. adults were offered online access to their medical records, and 65% were offered access and used it, according to federal data from ASTP/ONC. More than half (59%) were already juggling multiple portals. To meet that demand, vendors range from big-tech titans to focused companies that serve specific practice types or therapeutic areas.
Choices are good. Changes? Not so much, at least where patients are concerned. No matter how well you prepare patients for a new self-service portal or a switch from one system to another, and no matter how seamless the vendor says the change will be, there will be issues.
Here are the three you’ll run into, and the materials and strategies that head off the worst headaches, so you and your patients get the benefits of the new system sooner.
Problem 1: Front-Office Staff Aren’t Trained on the New Portal
Your receptionists aren’t technology experts, but they’re on the front lines, so they need to know the portal well. This is not optional. Your technology provider should have training materials you can use, but you can’t rely on those alone.
Training also needs to cover more than how the portal works. Knowing how to use the portal and knowing how to talk to patients about it are two different skills. You chose this system because it’s an improvement, so you don’t want staff presenting it to patients as a hassle. This should be good news!
Your healthcare brand covers every part of the patient experience. Your front-office staff carry that brand. So does your patient portal.
Solution: Multifaceted Training for Front-Office Staff
A four-walls campaign (an internal campaign aimed at your own staff, using signage, emails, and talking points) is one way to get your team trained and on board. Regular email updates help too. Take your tech provider up on its guided tutorials and print a quick-reference sheet with support phone numbers and help-site links your team can keep at the desk. When you’re choosing an EHR or patient portal vendor, ask other practices like yours how good the vendor’s support really is and check trusted review sources. That way you’ll have a solid base to build from.
In the four-walls campaign, train front-office staff to answer the most common questions about the new system and to talk about it positively. Investing in new technology only to have receptionists call it terrible within earshot of patients undercuts the whole effort. Staff need to be upbeat and ready to sell the portal. If they’re not, you’ll likely run into Problem 2.
Problem 2: Patients Aren’t Signing Up for the Portal
Picture this: You’ve integrated and set up the new software, which was an ordeal on its own. Now it’s ready and barely anyone is signing up. Reception is fielding just as many phone calls as they were before you made the switch. You’ve notified patients and sent more than one email with sign-up links, but people aren’t clicking.
How many patients hold out will depend on your patient demographics and practice or facility type, but you will have some regardless. If your patients skew older, that number will likely be higher.
Solution: Communicate About the Portal Before, During, and After the Switch
Your technology provider will almost certainly have its own patient notifications and ready-made sign-up links. Don’t rely on them alone. Patients don’t know your vendor. They know you, and your voice matters. ASTP/ONC found that patients encouraged by their own provider to use a portal accessed and used it at higher rates than those who weren’t.
Strategies for communicating include:
• Sending a series of emails from your practice.
• Sending a direct mail campaign if it’s feasible, especially if many of your patients are older adults.
• Putting up signage in the office before the change, both at reception and in exam rooms.
Patients need to know what’s coming, and they need to be excited about it. What will the switch mean for them? How will it make it easier to manage their health, message your team, and see their records? Tell them! The selling points that convinced you to choose the platform should reach your patients too. Again, this is part of your brand.
And don’t stop once sign-ups start. If you front-load all of your communication and treat the job as done at launch, you’ll run into Problem 3.
Problem 3: Patients Are Asking Clinicians for Tech Support
Your clinicians don’t want to give tech tutorials instead of delivering care. They’ll get asked anyway, especially by older patients.
You can’t avoid this entirely, no matter what you do. It happens even without a system change, since new-to-you patients have the same questions that established patients have after making a switch. Expect a surge of questions to nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, phlebotomists, physical therapists (literally anyone) about how to log in, how to message a provider from a computer, or where to find a prescription.
Solution: Use In-Office Signage and Printed Materials
Everything above will help curb this. After the switch, lean heavily on environmental advertising (i.e. signage and printed materials placed throughout your facility).
In the waiting room, put up prominent signage that explains what the portal is, where to sign up, and the sign-up process step by step. Your technology provider may supply some of this, but it may not fit your patients’ needs, and it won’t carry your brand. They aren’t your branding agency.
Tailor materials in the waiting room, at reception, and in exam rooms to different levels of tech comfort: a QR code for confident smartphone users, a printed step-by-step card for less tech-savvy patients. That cuts down the questions clinicians get and gives them something to hand out when they do get one.
Patient Portal Transition Checklist
Before go-live
• Train front-office staff on how the portal works and how to talk about it and get them signed up for any training offered by the vendor.
• Print a support quick-reference sheet for the front desk.
• Start patient emails, direct mail, and in-office signage announcing the change.
At launch
• Send sign-up links from your practice, not just the vendor. Send more direct mail if you can.
• Have front-office staff invite patients to sign up at check-in.
After launch
• Keep signage up in the waiting room, at reception, and in exam rooms.
• Offer both QR codes and printed step-by-step cards.
• Give clinicians handouts for the portal questions they’ll still get, and adapt these as needed after they start rolling in.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you get patients to sign up for a new patient portal?
Communicate from your practice, not just your vendor, and keep it going before, during, and after launch. Use emails, direct mail, and in-office signage, and train front-office staff to promote the portal. Patients encouraged by their own provider are more likely to use it.
When should you tell patients about a patient portal change?
Before the switch. Start emails and in-office signage ahead of go-live, continue through launch, and keep reminders up afterward, since many patients won’t act on the first notice.
Who should be trained on a new patient portal?
Everyone patients talk to. Start with front-office staff, who field most questions, then clinicians, who will be asked anyway. Training should cover how the portal works and how to talk about it positively.
How do you help older or less tech-savvy patients use a patient portal?
Offer more than one format. Printed step-by-step cards at reception and in exam rooms, direct mail, and staff who can walk patients through sign-up all reach patients who won’t scan a QR code.
Get an Expert Partner for Your EHR or Patient Portal Transition
Is your head spinning thinking about wrangling front-office staff, clinicians, and patients as you switch systems? bfw has a dual heritage in healthcare and tech, with experience running multimedia four-walls (internal) campaigns and patient campaigns.
If you need a hand making your new patient portal a win for your brand, give us a call or contact us.
Switching EHR or patient portal systems is never as seamless as the vendor promises. Whether you run a private practice, a group of practices, or a hospital, expect three problems: front-office staff who aren’t ready to support the new portal, patients who don’t sign up, and clinicians fielding tech questions instead of delivering care. All three are predictable, which means all three can be planned for.
A patient portal that gives patients easy access to their health records is no longer a nice-to-have. In 2024, 77% of U.S. adults were offered online access to their medical records, and 65% were offered access and used it, according to federal data from ASTP/ONC. More than half (59%) were already juggling multiple portals. To meet that demand, vendors range from big-tech titans to focused companies that serve specific practice types or therapeutic areas.
Choices are good. Changes? Not so much, at least where patients are concerned. No matter how well you prepare patients for a new self-service portal or a switch from one system to another, and no matter how seamless the vendor says the change will be, there will be issues.
Here are the three you’ll run into, and the materials and strategies that head off the worst headaches, so you and your patients get the benefits of the new system sooner.
Problem 1: Front-Office Staff Aren’t Trained on the New Portal
Your receptionists aren’t technology experts, but they’re on the front lines, so they need to know the portal well. This is not optional. Your technology provider should have training materials you can use, but you can’t rely on those alone.
Training also needs to cover more than how the portal works. Knowing how to use the portal and knowing how to talk to patients about it are two different skills. You chose this system because it’s an improvement, so you don’t want staff presenting it to patients as a hassle. This should be good news!
Your healthcare brand covers every part of the patient experience. Your front-office staff carry that brand. So does your patient portal.
Solution: Multifaceted Training for Front-Office Staff
A four-walls campaign (an internal campaign aimed at your own staff, using signage, emails, and talking points) is one way to get your team trained and on board. Regular email updates help too. Take your tech provider up on its guided tutorials and print a quick-reference sheet with support phone numbers and help-site links your team can keep at the desk. When you’re choosing an EHR or patient portal vendor, ask other practices like yours how good the vendor’s support really is and check trusted review sources. That way you’ll have a solid base to build from.
In the four-walls campaign, train front-office staff to answer the most common questions about the new system and to talk about it positively. Investing in new technology only to have receptionists call it terrible within earshot of patients undercuts the whole effort. Staff need to be upbeat and ready to sell the portal. If they’re not, you’ll likely run into Problem 2.
Problem 2: Patients Aren’t Signing Up for the Portal
Picture this: You’ve integrated and set up the new software, which was an ordeal on its own. Now it’s ready and barely anyone is signing up. Reception is fielding just as many phone calls as they were before you made the switch. You’ve notified patients and sent more than one email with sign-up links, but people aren’t clicking.
How many patients hold out will depend on your patient demographics and practice or facility type, but you will have some regardless. If your patients skew older, that number will likely be higher.
Solution: Communicate About the Portal Before, During, and After the Switch
Your technology provider will almost certainly have its own patient notifications and ready-made sign-up links. Don’t rely on them alone. Patients don’t know your vendor. They know you, and your voice matters. ASTP/ONC found that patients encouraged by their own provider to use a portal accessed and used it at higher rates than those who weren’t.
Strategies for communicating include:
• Sending a series of emails from your practice.
• Sending a direct mail campaign if it’s feasible, especially if many of your patients are older adults.
• Putting up signage in the office before the change, both at reception and in exam rooms.
Patients need to know what’s coming, and they need to be excited about it. What will the switch mean for them? How will it make it easier to manage their health, message your team, and see their records? Tell them! The selling points that convinced you to choose the platform should reach your patients too. Again, this is part of your brand.
And don’t stop once sign-ups start. If you front-load all of your communication and treat the job as done at launch, you’ll run into Problem 3.
Problem 3: Patients Are Asking Clinicians for Tech Support
Your clinicians don’t want to give tech tutorials instead of delivering care. They’ll get asked anyway, especially by older patients.
You can’t avoid this entirely, no matter what you do. It happens even without a system change, since new-to-you patients have the same questions that established patients have after making a switch. Expect a surge of questions to nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, phlebotomists, physical therapists (literally anyone) about how to log in, how to message a provider from a computer, or where to find a prescription.
Solution: Use In-Office Signage and Printed Materials
Everything above will help curb this. After the switch, lean heavily on environmental advertising (i.e. signage and printed materials placed throughout your facility).
In the waiting room, put up prominent signage that explains what the portal is, where to sign up, and the sign-up process step by step. Your technology provider may supply some of this, but it may not fit your patients’ needs, and it won’t carry your brand. They aren’t your branding agency.
Tailor materials in the waiting room, at reception, and in exam rooms to different levels of tech comfort: a QR code for confident smartphone users, a printed step-by-step card for less tech-savvy patients. That cuts down the questions clinicians get and gives them something to hand out when they do get one.
Patient Portal Transition Checklist
Before go-live
• Train front-office staff on how the portal works and how to talk about it and get them signed up for any training offered by the vendor.
• Print a support quick-reference sheet for the front desk.
• Start patient emails, direct mail, and in-office signage announcing the change.
At launch
• Send sign-up links from your practice, not just the vendor. Send more direct mail if you can.
• Have front-office staff invite patients to sign up at check-in.
After launch
• Keep signage up in the waiting room, at reception, and in exam rooms.
• Offer both QR codes and printed step-by-step cards.
• Give clinicians handouts for the portal questions they’ll still get, and adapt these as needed after they start rolling in.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you get patients to sign up for a new patient portal?
Communicate from your practice, not just your vendor, and keep it going before, during, and after launch. Use emails, direct mail, and in-office signage, and train front-office staff to promote the portal. Patients encouraged by their own provider are more likely to use it.
When should you tell patients about a patient portal change?
Before the switch. Start emails and in-office signage ahead of go-live, continue through launch, and keep reminders up afterward, since many patients won’t act on the first notice.
Who should be trained on a new patient portal?
Everyone patients talk to. Start with front-office staff, who field most questions, then clinicians, who will be asked anyway. Training should cover how the portal works and how to talk about it positively.
How do you help older or less tech-savvy patients use a patient portal?
Offer more than one format. Printed step-by-step cards at reception and in exam rooms, direct mail, and staff who can walk patients through sign-up all reach patients who won’t scan a QR code.
Get an Expert Partner for Your EHR or Patient Portal Transition
Is your head spinning thinking about wrangling front-office staff, clinicians, and patients as you switch systems? bfw has a dual heritage in healthcare and tech, with experience running multimedia four-walls (internal) campaigns and patient campaigns.
If you need a hand making your new patient portal a win for your brand, give us a call or contact us.
