Patient portal software is the secure site or app where your patients read results, message staff, request visits, fill out intake forms, and pay bills without calling the front desk. For a small practice, the right one comes down to five features and whether your team will use it, not the length of the feature list. This guide walks the choice honestly, and our own pricing sits on the documentation side of that stack, not the portal side.
Key takeaways
- By 2022, about 73% of individuals were offered a portal and 57% used one, per the ONC’s HINTS 6 data brief, and 51% used an app to get in.
- Five features carry most of the value: secure messaging, results release, digital intake, appointment requests, and bill pay.
- Many EHRs bundle a portal at no separate patient charge; standalone tools like Klara are quote-priced per provider or location.
- The ONC information-blocking rule means you can’t block a patient’s access to their own records, and a portal is the usual way practices meet that.
were offered a patient portal in 2022 (ONC HINTS 6)
accessed their online record or portal in 2022
reached their portal through an app, not just a website
What does patient portal software actually do?
Strip the marketing off and a patient portal is a login. On the other side of it, your patient can see the parts of their chart you release, send a message to your staff, ask for an appointment, complete forms before they arrive, and pay what they owe. That’s the whole job. Everything else a vendor lists is a variation on those few verbs.
It matters more than it used to. Per the ONC’s HINTS 6 data brief, about 73% of people were offered online access to their records in 2022, up sharply from 2020, and 57% actually used it. Your patients are no longer surprised by a portal. They expect one, and a growing share, 51% in that survey, reach it through a phone app rather than a browser. If your practice doesn’t offer some version of this, you’re the outlier now.
Which five features actually matter for a small practice?
We’ve watched practices buy portals on the strength of a demo, then use one-fifth of what they paid for. So here’s the short list that earns its keep in a two-provider clinic on a busy Tuesday.
- Secure messaging. Two-way, HIPAA-appropriate messaging between patient and staff. This is the feature that quietly kills phone tag.
- Electronic results release. Patients see labs and results in the portal instead of waiting for a callback. Set your release rules carefully; some results need a clinician’s note first.
- Digital intake forms. New-patient and pre-visit forms filled out before arrival, flowing into the chart instead of onto a clipboard.
- Appointment requests or self-scheduling. At minimum a request; at best, patients book open slots themselves.
- Online bill pay. Card on file, copays, and balances collected without a paper statement.
If a portal does those five well and your front desk will actually use it, the rest is upside. A portal that does twelve things poorly is worse than one that does five things cleanly.
How do athenahealth, Klara, and Phreesia compare?
These three show up on most small-practice shortlists, and they’re not really the same kind of product. One is a portal bundled into an EHR, one is a communication layer, one is an intake specialist. Knowing which is which saves you from comparing a truck to a wrench.
| Capability | athenahealth Portal | Klara (ModMed) | Phreesia |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bundled with an EHR | |||
| Secure messaging | |||
| Test-result access | |||
| Digital intake forms | |||
| Self-scheduling | |||
| Online bill pay | |||
| Best fit | athenaOne practices | Messaging-first clinics | Intake + payments |
Bundled with an EHR
Secure messaging
Test-result access
Digital intake forms
Self-scheduling
Online bill pay
Best fit
athenahealth ships a real portal. Per its patient-engagement page, the athenahealth Patient Portal and the athenaPatient app give patients secure records and test-result access, two-way texting and secure chat, self-scheduling, online payment, and self check-in with screeners and consent forms. It’s part of athenaOne, so the portal and the record are one system. That’s its strength and its constraint: it’s the obvious pick if you already run athenaOne, and not a standalone product you’d bolt onto a different EHR.
Klara, now part of ModMed, is a communication platform more than a portal. Per its product pages, it pulls texts, web chat, phone calls, and voicemails into one HIPAA-appropriate thread, and adds e-forms and intake, two-way video visits, and self-scheduling. It integrates with EHRs including athenaOne and AdvancedMD. You reach for Klara when messaging is the real pain and your record system already handles the chart.
Phreesia is the intake and payments specialist. Per its registration product page, patients check themselves in from their own device with no app or login, and pay copays and balances during registration through options like Apple Pay and payment plans. Phreesia says 85% of patients self-check-in across its network. It’s narrower than a full portal on purpose, and very good at the narrow thing.
A bundled EHR portal usually wins for records access; a standalone tool wins for one sharp job
Our read, from watching practices shop: if your biggest gap is patient-facing access to records and results, a portal bundled into your EHR is usually the cleaner buy. The portal and the chart already speak the same language, and you’re not paying a second vendor to keep them in sync. athenahealth is the example above, and most modern EHRs ship something similar.
A standalone tool wins in two cases. First, when messaging is your actual pain and your EHR’s built-in portal is clumsy, a focused layer like Klara can be worth the extra line item. Second, when intake and point-of-service payment are the bottleneck, a specialist like Phreesia often collects more, faster, than a general portal’s forms. Buy the standalone when the specialist genuinely beats the bundled feature, not by default.
The trap is buying a big portal suite for one feature you needed. If all you want is result release, don’t sign a platform contract for it.
Patient Square sits on the documentation side of the stack, not the portal side
We’ll be straight with you, because this is a buyer guide and not a pitch. A patient portal isn’t a module we describe on our product pages, so we’re not going to claim one. What we build sits on the other side of the visit: the clinical documentation and the bundled AI EHR that your clinicians work in.
The AI Medical Scribe by Patient Square, one module of Practice Copilot, captures the visit as it happens and hands back a structured SOAP note, ICD-10 suggestions, and a prescription draft, ready to review and sign about two minutes after the visit. On the Copilot plan, that scribe comes with a bundled AI EHR at $119 per clinician per month on the annual plan. Every plan includes EHR-ready export as PDF, HL7, and FHIR files, so notes leave the system in a shape your other tools can read.
So think of the portal as one piece of the stack and the documentation engine as another. They solve different problems. If your top requirement today is a patient-facing portal, start with a dedicated portal or an EHR that bundles one. If finishing charts after hours is the thing eating your evenings, that’s the part we’re built for. Curious how the documentation side reads on your own visits? You can book a short demo and run the scribe on a real clinic day, and the pricing is on the page, no sales call to see it.
A short buying checklist
Before you sign anything, run the portal against your own week, not the demo script.
- Which of the five core features do you actually need this quarter?
- Will your front desk use the messaging, or route around it?
- Does it release results the way your clinicians want, with the right holds?
- Is it bundled into your EHR already, so you’re not paying twice?
- Can patients reach it on a phone, since half of portal users do?
If a tool clears that list, it’s a real contender. If it only shines in the sales deck, keep looking. For the documentation side of the same stack, our approach to the note and how we handle any-EHR export go deeper, and our security page covers how records are protected in transit and at rest.
Bottom line on choosing patient portal software
Pick the portal on five features, not on the feature count: secure messaging, results release, digital intake, appointment requests, and bill pay. If patient-facing access is your gap, a bundled EHR portal like athenahealth’s is usually the simplest path; if messaging or intake is the specific pain, Klara or Phreesia can beat the bundled option at that one job. A portal is one piece of a small practice’s stack. The documentation piece is a different problem, and it’s the one we work on.
Frequently asked questions
The FAQ above covers the recurring questions: what portal software does, the five features that matter, whether athenahealth and Klara count as portals, the information-blocking rule, and where our documentation tools fit. For related reading, see our take on the best EHR with an AI scribe built in and the athenahealth cost math.