Sending Online EHR Forms
- Dylan Nigh
- Tim Carpenter
This article explains the process of assigning Online EHR Forms to your patients, allowing them to access these forms through their Patient Portal. Before you begin, ensure that you have purchased the Patient Portal as part of your MacPractice License and that all necessary setup steps have been completed.
We will explore the entire workflow from start to finish, incorporating the patient's perspective to ensure you can provide the best possible assistance to your patients. Should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to MacPractice Support, and we will be happy to help you.
Creating a Patient Portal User
First, we will need to ensure that your patient has a Portal User set up properly. This will allow them to access their Patient Portal and any forms you send them.
In MacPractice, navigate to Patients Ability and select the patient for whom you wish to create a Portal access username and password.
Select the Patient tab, if you’re not there already
Next, select the Portal Access tab.
Then click the green plus button on the right
Once you have clicked the green plus button from step 4 above, you will be presented with two options in the resulting window:
Select an existing Portal User (upper pane): This option would be used when you are using the same portal user for multiple patient’s on the same account, such as a parent and children. You can select the same Portal Access login info for each patient on that account. This allows a single Patient Portal login for everyone on the account and gives access to each patient’s portal info on the same portal page, without the need to login to each patient’s portal separately.
In this case, instead of creating a new portal user in the Portal Access window, you would select an existing login. Use the search bar at the top to locate a specific login quickly. In this window, you will also see which patients and accounts a single Portal user has access to.
Add a new Portal User (lower pane): This option would be used if this patient will have their own portal account regardless if others are on the account or not. If you have separate portal access credentials for multiple patients on a single account, each person on the account would only have access to their own portal information.
Entering the Patient Credentials
If you choose option 2 above, Adding a New User, proceed with the following steps:
Click the green plus button at the top-right corner of this window. This will create a “new record” in the top pane.
At the bottom of this window you will see three fields in red. These are required before you will be able to continue. Fill in all of the fields in this area. The Email field is especially important, as any Online EHR Forms sent to this patient will generate an email to notify the patient that they have forms waiting for them to fill out.
A typical Username convention to use is the patient's name in lowercase letters, but using the same username on two different patients will prompt a duplicate alert. It is recommended to use the first and last initials with the patient’s last name as the username. For example, Bob Edward Smith would have a username of “besmith”.
(a) Next, click the Reset Password button. (b) You can either type a password or click Generate Password to have a strong password automatically generated for the patient. Passwords are required to be at least 8 characters long. Printing the Username and Password Card is required. You can also check the "Print Portal Instructions" checkbox, which will generate printable instructions for the patient to follow. (c) In the following print menu you can choose to print to paper or save the printout as PDF so it can be emailed to the patient.
Once the password is set and the documents have been saved and/or printed, click Create to create the user profile. If you click Create without first creating a password, you will be prompted to set the password at this point.
You will notice an entry listed under the Portal Access tab now. After this you can save the record, or you will be prompted to save automatically if you navigate away from this area.
Sending an Online Form to a Patient
To send an Online Form to a Patient, we'll first need to make sure we have either your EHR or Clipboard Ability shortcuts added to the MacPractice Toolbar. If you don't have them, you can add them by right clicking the toolbar and clicking Customize Toolbar, then simply drag and drop either icon to the Toolbar from the resulting window. Note that you will only see the Clipboard icon if you have purchased the iPad apps, but not the EHR ability (likely only seen on older MacPractice builds).
Go to the EHR ability
Select the patient you would like to send the form to, if you are not already on that patient.
Select the Registration Forms folder under Patient Portal in the sidebar to the left.
Click the green plus button above.
The template selection widow will appear. Select the template(s) you want to send.
If there are more than one patient on the account, with separate portal logins, you can select the correct patient from the Patient Portal User dropdown in this window.
Add any Special Instructions you would like the patient to know, if needed. This info will show under the Messages tab in the patient’s portal and the Summary tab, which will be the first thing they see when they login to their portal.
Click Send.
Receiving an Online Form from the Patient's Perspective
When a form is sent to a patient, an e-mail is generated to be sent to the Portal User's e-mail address, as described in Entering the Patient Credentials. It will be sent from the Patient Portal practice name, and the contents will include your practice's Portal URL. The contents will look something like this:
When they click the green "Log In To Your Account" button, they'll be taken to the Sign In webpage for your Patient Portal.
Here, they will enter the Username and Password you provided to them, and click the Log In button. They will initially be placed on the Summary page. From here, they will want to click the tab with their name, which will take them directly to the Forms tab.
From here, they can click the form they need to fill out. A form that appears in green with the word “New” in the title indicates a new from that has not been opened by the patient yet. This green highlighting will go away after the form has been accessed.
Managing Completed Patient Portal Forms