OutSmart EMR Knowledgebase

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The Patient Portal

The Patient Portal is an account that your clients and patients can create on OutSmart that allows them to interact with you, your staff, and your clinic.  They can update their profiles, book and cancel appointments, view documents and treatment plans you have shared with them, fill out and submit SmartForm questionnaires, upload documents (ETA April 2019), and communicate with you and your staff via chat (ETA April 2019).

A Patient Portal account can be used by individuals, but also by families wishing to have a single account where all their medical data is stored.

Creating An Account

Creating a Patient Portal account is easy, and can be done in one of 2 ways – automatically via online booking, or manually through our website.  Your patients can find more information here about the steps required to create a Patient Portal account.

Note that setting up a Patient Portal account is a 2 step process.  The first step is creating the account with an e-mail address and a password of their choice.  The second step is to obtain an access code from the clinic in order to load their medical data into their Patient Portal.  Without the Access Code, their Patient Portal account will be like an empty box.  In order to fill it with medical records, they need to get Access Codes from you.

Your patients can use as many Access Codes as they like in a single Patient Portal account.  Each Access Code they use will unlock access to more data.  You can learn more about Access Codes here.

Patient Portal Features

OutSmart’s Patient Portal is in constant development, and we are always adding new features.  As these features are released, we will update information about them here.  Here is a current list of what the Patient Portal offers:

  • Access to Treatment Plans
  • Access to Shared Documents
  • Access to Appointments for booking or cancellations
  • Access to complete and submit SmartForm Questionnaires
  • Access to Patient Profile
  • Ability to add family members to their Portal
  • Patient to Practitioner / Clinic messaging (ETA Fall 2020)
  • Documents Uploads (ETA July 2020)

Access To Treatment Plans

Patient treatment plans are automatically generated from SOAP charts.  Whether or not the SOAP chart is locked, a treatment plan will exist if any of the treatment plan sections of a SOAP chart are used.  These sections are:

  • Products
  • Diet and Nutrition
  • Lifestyle
  • Other Recommendations
  • Plan Freeform
Plan page menu from a SOAP chart showing the sections that are automatically used to generate a Treatment Plan

Plan page menu from a SOAP chart showing the sections that are automatically used to generate a Treatment Plan

In order for a patient to be able to see treatment plans in their Patient Portal account, you must provide them with their Medial Records Access Code, and they must have used it to unlock access to their medical data.

Access to Shared Documents

If you share documents with your clients in the Documents section of OutSmart, then these shared documents will be visible to the patient in their patient portal account.  You can learn how to share documents here.  In order for a patient to be able to see treatment plans in their Patient Portal account, you must provide them with their Medial Records Access Code, and they must have used it to unlock access to their medical data.

All documents shared with your patient will be visible in the Patient Portal.

All documents shared with your patient will be visible in the Patient Portal.

Access to Appointments

Patient will automatically, and without the use of Access Codes, be able to see any appointment they have themselves booked online. In order to see any appointments that were booked manually by clinic staff, the patient would need to have obtained and used a Medical Records Access Code.

View, re-book, or cancel appointment from the Patient Portal

View, re-book, or cancel appointment from the Patient Portal

Booking Appointments

If patients are logged into a Patient Portal account that has access to previously booked appointments, then they can easily book a new appointment right from the Patient Portal by clicking on a past appointment o re-book.  This will take them back to your Online Booking page.  If they do not have access to any previously booked appointment, then they will need to get to the Online Booking page using the “Book Now” button on your own clinic website.

Cancelling or Rescheduling Appointments

In order to allow your clients to cancel appointments online, you must activate that feature in your Online Booking preferences.  If you have not yet setup your online booking at all, this article will help to guide you.

Access your online booking options by clicking on the “gear” icon at the top right of the Calendar and then selecting “Online Booking Options”.  Once there, you will see options to allow your patients to cancel their appointments online, as well as the option to specify the minimum notice for these cancellations.

Allow your patients to cancel online by turning on the options in your Online Booking Preferences.

Allow your patients to cancel online by turning on the options in your Online Booking Preferences.

Which events can be cancelled online?

When you turn on online cancellations, all events booked by your clients can be cancelled online.  But it is important to note that unless you provide your patient with a Medical Records Access Code, they will online be able to see and cancel appointments that they have booked themselves through your Online Booking page.  This is a restriction for security reasons.  We do not provide patients any view of private information, even their bookings, until their account is properly identified and authorized by way of the Medical Records Access Code.  Until they are identified in this way, all they have access to is information that they have submitted themselves.  This will include any online bookings they have made themselves, any SmartForms (Intake Forms) they have completed themselves, and any files they have uploaded themselves.

When your patient logs into their Portal, the event cancellation button will appear directly beside their bookings.

Patient Portal view of events, and the cancellation button.

Patient Portal view of events, and the cancellation button.

Access to SmartForm Questionnaires

SmartForm Questionnaires are patient / client questionnaires or forms that can be filled out online prior to their appointment.  Most often SmartForms are used to administer intake forms, however they could also be used for things like diet journals, or patient outcome questionnaires.

You can learn more about SmartForms here.

In the Patient Portal, your clients will have access to any SmartForms you have assigned to them.  They will be able to fill them out, submit them, and review them.

Access to Profile Information

The Patient Portal will also allow access to patient profile information.  It is important to note that modifications to the patient profile information in the patient portal will not automatically change the information in their official patient record.  Instead, practitioners and clinic staff will still see the original demographic information in the Client Workspace, along with the information provided by the patient through the Patient Portal.  Practitioners and clinic staff can then make the decision of whether or not to update the official Patient Record with the new demographic information provided by the patient via the Patient Portal.

A patient's demographic information can be modified via the Patient Portal.

A patient’s demographic information can be modified via the Patient Portal.

Both the Official Patient Record information as well as the demographic information provided via the patient portal can be viewed in the Client Workspace.

Both the Official Patient Record information as well as the demographic information provided via the patient portal can be viewed in the Client Workspace.

Ability to add family members to the account

The patient portal is essentially an empty container until a Patient Record or SmartForms have been loaded into it.  In fact, you can load as many Patient Records as you want into a Patient Portal account using Access Codes.  An Access Code is key which unlocks access to various kinds of information and patient records.  Using multiple Access Codes in a Patient Portal account will provide access to multiple patient records.  This function is very useful for families who want access to all their medical records within a single patient portal with a single login.

Multiple family members can be added to a single Patient Portal account.

Multiple family members can be added to a single Patient Portal account.

When multiple Access Codes are entered and redeemed in a Patient Portal account, a list of available Patient Records will show at the top left of the page.  Click on a specific patient’s name to load their information.