Nearly Three Quarters of Consumers Say Single Healthcare Portal Will Improve Patient Experience

Online portals have become a popular way to manage healthcare information and payments, but consumers must often use more than one portal, which is cumbersome at best, and that’s giving a boost to unified platforms that aggregate this information and activity in one place.

Analyzing this in the study “Healthcare In The Digital Age: Consumers See Unified Platforms As Key To Better Health,” a PYMNTS and Lynx collaboration, we surveyed over 2,500 U.S. consumers to gauge interest in the single unified platform approach.

Much of the growing consumer interest in unified healthcare platforms comes down to one word: knowledge. In a post-pandemic world where many consumers have undergone changes to health insurance and providers, making this information manageable is a top priority.

As the study states, 58% of consumers say a unified digital platform “will increase their convenience when managing their treatment and benefits, and 22% say this is the most important reason for their interest in using a unified digital platform.”

Over half of the respondents (52%) believe a unified platform will improve their access to treatment, “with 15% citing this as the attribute that is most important to them. Centralized information is also appealing, as 41% of consumers say they are interested in having all their healthcare information in one place, with 25% of consumers saying this is the feature that has the most appeal for them.” And 36% of consumers say online portals improve the security of their medical data.

Additionally, more than 8 in 10 (82%) of consumers surveyed said a unified platform will yield better information about their access to medical, dental, and vision benefits, with another 82% saying a unified platform would help them understand pharmacy benefits and Rx discounts.

Those surveyed also wanted a more efficient way of accessing lists of in-network practitioners close to homes and jobs, or, as the study states, “would like an automated service that tells them about the insurance services available to them which they are not using, with 81% of respondents expressing interest in each of these features.”

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