Setting Up The Patient Portal
- Dylan Nigh
The Patient Portal is an excellent method to provide a line of communication between practices and their patients. You can send messages directly to the patient, provide them access to their health records, assign forms for patients to fill out electronically, and allow them to schedule their own appointments with minimal fuss.
The Patient Portal for MacPractice will connect to your MacPractice Server and communicate securely to display the patient's information on the Portal. Your Portal website will be hosted by MacPractice, but all of your patient and office data will remain secure on your MacPractice Server.
The Patient Portal requires MacPractice Build 13.11.4 and above. The Patient Portal can be set up once the feature has been enabled on your office's license.
What Do I Need To Set Up the Portal?
In order to set up your Patient Portal, you will need to contact MacPractice Support and ask to speak to a Representative about setting up Patient Portal. Our Support Representative will need:
The public IP address of your MacPractice Server. This should be a static IP address to avoid unnecessary outages. Please consult with your IT or network specialist if you are unsure how to locate this IP address.
The name of your database, if your office has changed the database name to a non-default name. When in doubt, ask your Support Representative and they can help you verify this name.
Your Office name and Phone Number. The Office Name and the Phone Number will be displayed at the top of the Portal site.
A subdomain name suggestion (for example, drjones.phiportal.com or wellnessonline.phiportal.com). We cannot guarantee your subdomain choice if it has already been taken by another office.
Your router will need to be configured to allow traffic in a certain way. Information on this need is located below in the "Configuring your Router and Port Forwarding" section.
Choosing a Subdomain
When setting up the Portal, a customized subdomain name will need to be created for the office. This is effectively the web address that your patients will use to access your Patient Portal. The subdomain must be unique as no two subdomains of the same name can be used.
The URL will be https://<Your Subdomain here>.phiportal.com. For example, if we choose a subdomain of "ProfessionalHealthcareProvider", the web address for the portal would be https://ProfessionalHealthcareProvider.phiportal.com.
Note: A Portal Subdomain cannot be changed easily once initially set. You'll want to be absolutely sure of your chosen subdomain before having our Support Rep set this up!
Configuring your Router and Port Forwarding
You will need to follow these steps to ensure your MacPractice Server can communicate securely with the Portal Site. You will need to have an IT or Network Specialist complete these steps, as MacPractice Support cannot assist with network configuration.
Your MacPractice Server must use a Static IP address. A non-static IP address could change, preventing patients from reaching the Patient Portal. If your Static IP address should change for any reason, contact MacPractice and they can reconfigure the Patient Portal to point at the appropriate IP address.
Port 1234 should be open to accept incoming traffic from IP Address 143.198.18.14.
All incoming traffic from IP 143.198.18.14 Port 1234 should be forwarded to the MacPractice Server’s Internal IP address.
Once these steps are all complete, a MacPractice Support Representative can complete the Portal set-up on our end, and they will inform you when you should be able to visit your portal via your chosen subdomain.
Information on how to utilize the Portal can be found in the "How to Use the Patient Portal guide.