A leading EHR’s announcement to allow patients to access their portals from multiple health systems with a single login has generated attention, but has perhaps left us with even more questions (with not a lot of answers). The idea is straightforward: connect disparate patient portals to give consumers a more seamless experience. This is meaningful progress for patients who will benefit from reduced friction. As a company deeply committed to interoperability and open standards, Praia Health supports any initiative that makes healthcare more connected. In fact, Praia was first created at Providence five years ago to enable a frictionless, single sign-on experience for patients across multiple apps, services, and EHR instances. That core concept lies within this offering, and we are glad to see it brought to the broader market.
If health systems choose to deploy this feature, they must do so with the intent of maintaining their own consumer relationships by differentiating their brand and experiences to protect and strengthen their market share. Health systems must ensure this goes beyond the portal experience and encompasses all of their patient-facing point solutions and ancillary services.
This feature will simplify access for patients, but it will do so by pulling the consumer experience further into the EHR’s orbit – away from your brand, your providers, your support center, and your digital experience. For health systems, this isn’t just about integration and health record consolidation. It’s about ownership of the patient relationship and the trust that is built with patients.
When patients log in through a centralized portal, their relationship is ceded to the technology vendor, and the patient becomes a free agent across health systems. True loyalty comes from the care and experiences you deliver, the trust you build, and the brand you protect.
Even the best EHR-connected portal doesn’t cover the full extent of what a patient needs in their healthcare journey. From navigating financial tools, to engaging with population health programs, to accessing third-party applications, ancillary services, and community resources, much of the patient health and wellness experience will continue to exist outside the EHR. This new feature doesn’t change that. It still leaves the broader digital patient journey fragmented.
By relying on the EHR’s patient portal to own the digital experience, health systems risk locking themselves into a limited, commoditized model of patient engagement at a time when the industry needs innovation the most. It also provides easy off-ramps for your patients to go across the street to a different organization, further fragmenting care. Patient leakage is bad for both health systems and patients alike, with many studies showing the positive effects of continuity of care on patients.
This scenario has played out vividly in the hospitality industry with services like Expedia and Kayak. How many times have you heard a hotel front desk tell a guest there is nothing they can do because they booked through an aggregator site instead of booking directly? This outsourcing is what the healthcare industry should aim to avoid.
A health system’s most valuable and loyal patients are also the most digitally engaged. Health systems cannot afford to outsource and potentially disrupt those relationships. Instead, organizations should double down on their brand, digital access, and convenience. If your digital front door is indistinguishable from every other health system’s, patients will go where care is most accessible, least expensive, and digitally native – even if that means choosing another system or seeking lower quality of care. Why spend tens of millions of dollars on marketing and digital innovation teams to end up with a commoditized patient experience?
Owning the digital experience means more than providing access to a portal aggregator. It means:
Praia Health believes in a future where digital identity and consumer experience are assets that health systems own and control themselves. That’s why we’ve built a platform that connects EMRs, CRMs, campaign tools, point solutions, ancillary services, and portals into one seamless patient experience under a health system's unique brand.
This EHR announcement is a great step forward in reducing friction, but it is not the strategic solution to drive growth or loyalty. Health systems have a choice: have their brand commoditized in a vendor-controlled ecosystem or build digital loyalty that lasts with Praia Health.
The future of your consumer experience depends on who owns the digital experience. Make sure it’s you.
