Hastings Health Centre online portal sees surge in patient enrolment

Increase in patient enrolment on Hastings Health Centre's online Manage My Health portal. Photo / Supplied

More than 100 patients a week at Hastings Health Centre are signing up to use its online portal service.

The rapid surge in user enrolment of the Manage My Health portal at the region's largest primary healthcare provider site has seen more patients than ever stay connected with their doctor and nurse teams.

Hastings Health Centre chief executive Andrew Lesperance said he expected numbers to keep increasing as more people adapted to using technology as a new way of engaging in healthcare services.

"We want to encourage more people to register. We're seeing patients, from young adults through to the older people signing up.

"We've even had a 94-year-old patient, who uses the Manage My Health's phone app, tell our team how easy it is."

Lesperance added: "We want people to stay as connected as possible with their GPs and family health teams and we are doing this by making access to our online portal as simple as possible."

The Manage My Health online portal and app enables patients to book appointments, request repeat prescriptions, view laboratory results and access health records from a computer or device.

Up until alert level 4 lockdown, about a third of Hastings Health Centre's 32,000 enrolled patients had already signed up to Manage My Health, which then required people to register in person when visiting their doctor.

Lesperance added: "When faced with the level 4 requirements, HHC's systems management team launched new security steps to ensure patient confidentiality was fully protected during the Manage My Health registration process so that it can now be fully completed from home."