Patient Portal Adoption: How to Get Patients to Actually Use It

The JenPulse team · 5 October 2026 · 3 min read

An older woman in a red jacket using her smartphone in a waiting area
Photo: Li Lin on Unsplash

A patient portal can take a surprising amount of work off your phones: results, refill requests, appointment changes, forms and messages. But only if patients actually use it. Many practices switch on a portal, send one email invitation, and wonder why the phones are as busy as ever.

Here is what reliably raises adoption.

Start with why patients would bother

Patients don't log in to portals for their own sake. They log in to get something done faster than a phone call. Make sure your portal is genuinely useful for:

  • Seeing test results without waiting for a call back
  • Requesting refills without phoning during office hours
  • Booking or changing appointments
  • Messaging the care team about non-urgent questions
  • Completing forms before the visit instead of in the waiting room

If a portal can't do the things patients care about, no amount of promotion will help.

Enroll patients in person, at the right moment

The single most effective step is enrolling patients while they are in the office. A front-desk team member sends the invite during check-in, the patient sets up access on their phone in the waiting room, and staff help if they get stuck. Patients who leave without access rarely set it up later.

Good moments to mention the portal:

  • At check-in for every new patient
  • When a lab test is ordered: "Your results will be in the portal"
  • When a patient asks for a refill or a form

Make the first login effortless

  • Short invitation links that work on a phone
  • Simple identity verification without long codes copied from letters
  • An app or mobile-friendly website, because most patients will use a phone
  • A clear first screen that shows what they can do

Every extra step loses some patients.

Make the portal the default path

Small staff habits shift behavior over time:

  • Send results through the portal first, with a short message that they are available
  • When patients call for something the portal handles, help them do it in the portal once
  • Put portal instructions on appointment reminders, receipts and your website
  • Use the same name for it everywhere, so patients know what you mean

Respond quickly to portal messages

If messages sit unanswered for days, patients go back to the phone. Agree on a response time (for example, by the end of the next business day), assign who handles which messages, and set expectations in the portal itself. Make clear that the portal is not for emergencies.

Support patients who need help

Older patients and those less comfortable with technology may need more support. Offer to let family members or caregivers have proxy access where your rules allow, keep paper and phone options available, and never make the portal the only route to care.

In the US: access is a right, not a feature

Under the 21st Century Cures Act, patients have a right to timely access to their electronic health information, and practices must avoid information blocking. A well-used portal is one of the simplest ways to meet that expectation while saving staff time.

Measure adoption

Track the share of active patients who have logged in at least once in the past year, and how many messages, refill requests and appointment changes come through the portal instead of the phone. Review it quarterly, and celebrate progress with the front desk; they make it happen.

Before you choose software

When you evaluate any practice system, test the portal from a patient's point of view on your own phone: the invitation, the first login, finding a result, and sending a message. Ten minutes of testing tells you more than any feature list. You can explore how JenPulse handles patients, appointments and records in the live demo.