HealthReach Community Health in Maine has chosen InteliChart’s Patient Portal to improve patient engagement and experience quality.

HealthReach, a private non-profit organisation with a 49-year legacy, operates 12 rural community health centres across central and western Maine. It serves over 26,000 patients annually across more than 100,000 visits, and cares for patients regardless of their ability to pay or insurance status.

HealthReach has a team that helps patients sign up for programmes that assist with the affordability of their care and medications, all at no cost to the patient.

In support of HealthReach’s dedication to serving its patients, the organisation is advised by a patient-majority governing board and regularly queries its patients for feedback. It is from this feedback that HealthReach noted a recurring theme of requests for improvements to its patient portal.

After a search of other options on the market, HealthReach’s IT department identified North Carolina-based InteliChart’s Patient Portal (www.intelichart.com/patient-portal) as the best fit for its non-profit healthcare needs. A factor in its decision was finding a system with a bi-directional integration with the EHR, which Patient Portal provided.

“For our patients, their patient portal experience is directly significant,” said Randi Bento, HealthReach director of operations. “We set very high standards for ourselves so that we can best serve our neighbours across the communities of rural Maine. By upgrading our patient portal, we aim to make key health information more accessible to our patients and to achieve better health outcomes for them.”

Gary Hamilton, CEO of InteliChart, added: “Our collaborative relationship with HealthReach and our dedication to enhancing patient engagement align perfectly. We’re excited to help HealthReach achieve their goal of providing an efficient and user-friendly patient portal that offers unmatched integration with EHR and EPM.”

HealthReach’s search prioritised ease of use for patients. It was also important that administrative and IT team workloads were considered. The decision to implement Patient Portal was driven by several key factors:

• Customisability, without the need for work tickets
• Portal functionalities that match those of larger organisations
• Seamless integration of lab results, including graphical displays
• Easy upload of pictures into patient records
• Streamlined portal migration for a smooth transition for patients and staff alike
• Patient engagement platform

“The majority of our patients are seniors, rurally based, and we actively welcome members of Maine’s most vulnerable, lowest income and otherwise medically underserved communities,” said Edward Molleo, HealthReach director of communications. “We are excited to offer a modern patient portal to the people of Maine with the quality of service that all of us would want for ourselves and our loved ones.”

InteliChart (www.intelichart.com) delivers a patient engagement platform that helps providers attain better patient outcomes. EHR vendors, hospitals, health system and physician practices have selected InteliChart as their patient engagement platform, collectively representing over 80 million patients. It integrates with more than 40 EHR products.

HealthReach (www.HealthReach.org) consists of twelve community health centres across central and western Maine. Clinicians deliver to residents from nine of Maine’s 16 counties.