The patient portal experience facilitated by our AdvancedMD Practice Management software has been the topic of much debate between our staff, our Medical Practice Management software provider (herein referred to as AdvancedMD), and you, our patients.

To our patients, your voice has been heard loud and clear. We acknowledge and agree that our patient portal has not met up to expectations. In short, we are working on a solution to improve your current online patient experience.

EHPVA is a small practice, allowing us to offer such an intimate level of care to each one of our patients. However, as a small practice, we must rely on other service partners, such as AdvancedMD, to comply with government regulations.

The past few months have sent a shockwave throughout the healthcare industry. In our case, an exponential increase in traffic to the servers at Advanced MD, causing unforeseen network congestion, and thus user downtime. The portal has been frustrating and should work better under normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances.

Thank you to our patients for the enthusiastic feedback concerning the patient portal. As the healthcare industry nationwide reels from the massive uptick in web server traffic, medical practice management services are trying to keep pace. AdvancedMD recently released an update to better serve its clients. Yet, the pressure from medical practices for immediate results was met with hasty software development, leading to several bugs within the AdvancedMD’s software platforms, such as our patient portal.

We appreciate our patient’s understanding as we, along with the rest of our nation’s healthcare system, work not only to stop the spread of COVID19 but also to recover from its repercussions. We are changing how we offer healthcare and are learning what is needed best to provide that care in a newly revised environment.

EHPVA always encourages patients to continue sharing their concerns. However, due to our limited staffing and the number of medical issues addressed by our office daily, feedback on technology will not always yield a direct response but is always taken into account.

For patients who have forgotten their patient portal password, they may reset their password, as shown on the patient portal login page. If patients are experiencing portal issues outside of password management and are running into errors/experiencing problems within the portal itself, please email exec@ehpva.com and describe the problem. Issues reported by patients will be sent directly to AdvancedMD, as they work towards remediating the recent update which has caused the majority of the portal problems.

We would also like to remind patients that, while we strive to provide short turnaround time on results review and patient requests, it can take up to one week for results to be reviewed, even if they have been received. Critical results will be called as soon as the office receives them in accordance with the standard of care. Delays greater than one week should prompt you to contact the office to ensure there were no issues receiving the reports, especially during this pandemic, as many vendors have had their servers overloaded. Prescription refills will be addressed within two business days. Per our CS policy, controlled substance prescriptions will be addressed within three business days to allow for additional processing time. Billing inquiries should be submitted directly to our billing provider, Diane, who is available at billing@ehpva.com. The front office is not able to answer questions regarding the billing as it is processed off-site.

We would also like to take a moment to remind patients that EHPVA is a true micro practice, and there is a limit to how many direct phone calls to discuss results that can be made by Dr. Kanal. It is essential to remember that any results or recommendations provided by the staff are always provided under the supervision of the reviewing physician, which is why we encourage engagement in the patient portal. The patient portal allows you to review patient results and submit refill requests and questions directly to Dr. Kanal.

We are committed to working with AdvancedMD to get the portal back to its normal performance so that we can continue to serve you better. As new developments happen and we find the best way forward, we will send updates about the portal via email, in addition to posting them on our website.

Thank you for your time, attention, and understanding.

Wishing you the very best from Dr. Kanal and Tammy