UAMS First in State to Allow Patients to View, Pay Bill Online
| LITTLE ROCK – Patients at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) can now view and pay their bill, schedule a doctor’s appointment, refill a prescription and view lab test results online through the free and secure MyUAMSHealth patient portal available at uamshealth.com.
The bill payment features debuted in February, making UAMS Medical Center the first in Arkansas to allow its hospital and clinic patients to view their statement online in addition to making payments. Since the patient portal was introduced in 2009, more than 2,600 patients have registered on the portal, making more than 3,700 appointments and refilling more than 2,500 prescriptions.
The most popular feature, with more than 45,000 views since October 2009, has been accessing laboratory test results. An electronic copy of the doctor’s letter explaining the results is also included. Current and some historical results are available.
In addition to bill payment and appointment features, patients can use MyUAMSHealth to communicate through secure electronic messaging with their family medicine, internal medicine and obstetrics/gynecology doctors as well as pre-register for upcoming hospital stays.
“Our patients value convenience in addition to excellent medical care and with MyUAMSHealth, we created a comprehensive link for our patients to manage their medical care online,” said Richard Pierson, vice chancellor for clinical programs and executive director of UAMS Medical Center. “We are pleased that so many of our patients have used the online patient portal to easily schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, access lab results, communicate with their physicians and view hospital and clinic statements.”
Introducing online bill viewing and payment was part of an effort to develop consolidated billing statements for hospital patients.
“We consolidated and redesigned printed statements to make them easier to read and more convenient for UAMS Medical Center patients while also making the information available online,” said Dan Riley, associate vice chancellor for clinical finance.
Customer service representatives can access electronic copies of patient statements when responding to patients who call with questions. Patients using the MyUAMSHealth portal have the option to receive only online statements.
For patients of UAMS family medicine, internal medicine or obstetrics/gynecology doctors, MyUAMSHealth offers a way to send messages and medical questions. Messages are received by a clinic nurse who will route the message to the appropriate doctor. After the question has been answered, a copy will be included with the patient’s electronic medical record.
“We’ve talked to our patients throughout the process to develop an online experience that gives them the information they need to coordinate their care,” said Keith Henning, the information technology project manager for MyUAMSHealth. “We will continue to develop new features to enhance MyUAMSHealth in the future.”
To register for MyUAMSHealth, patients should visit uamshealth.com and click on the “sign up” button next to the red heart in the upper right corner of the home page. To access lab results, patients need to complete a form available online allowing the results to be made available through the encrypted, password-protected patient portal.
The patient portal is currently available to UAMS Medical Center hospital and clinic patients. The system is expected to be available to patients in the UAMS Area Health Education Center (AHEC) clinics around the state by the end of May.
UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Related Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a 540,000-square-foot hospital; six centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has 2,775 students and 748 medical residents. Its centers of excellence include the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, the Psychiatric Research Institute and the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including nearly 1,150 physicians who provide medical care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and UAMS’ Area Health Education Centers throughout the state. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com.