Whats a Practice Portal

Our secure website: The Light Clinic PC Practice Portal

What is our Practice Portal?

Our Practice Portal (as in Medical Practice) is a healthcare-related secure website that provides patients with access to their medical information from our clinic's electronic medical record system. It gives the patient the ability to directly monitor their own personal health history. Patients are also given the option to create customized views of their medical information so that they only receive the information most important to them. They can also print out or save to a computer file, a complete medical history that includes every clinic visit, prescription, diagnosis, etc., since the point where we starting using computerized medical record keeping in early 2004. Earlier paper records have been scanned into a document database that is not available on the the portal, but can be retrieved upon request.

Portals also provide easy access to appointment scheduling, prescription refill requests, “ask the doctor” style communications, calendars, announcements, and updates regarding our medical facility, organization or other relevant topics. You can change your "personal" information such as address, phone number, change of name, and so on. These changes are reviewed prior to being made to your records, however.

Probably the most exciting thing to do on the portal, is to view your lab results after a visit to the clinic, much sooner that you would otherwise be able to get them. You can also compare them right away with previous lab results!

The technology that makes it possible to do this without risk to your confidentiality is the use of encrypted secure communication between your computer and the website's server. This is the same level of security that your bank, brokerage, or other institution uses to keep your communication from being able to be "cracked" by a possible computer snoop. You are required to have a user name and a password to log into your individual account on the Portal.

Obtaining Your User Login and Password

Setting up an account on the Portal requires a PIN number that only we can give you.
You can go to the Portal and set up a user name and password for yourself before getting the PIN number, but you will still need it to verify your authority to access your medical records. You can also get the PIN number from us, and then go set up your user name and password. The process is the same either way.

Communicating with The Light Clinic through the Portal

When you use a Practice portal form to request a prescription refill, ask for an appointment, or ask your doctor a question, it comes directly into our medical record system in an encrypted secure way with no emails having any of your information. When we reply to your request, you get an email that tells you there is a reply waiting for you on the Portal. A link to your login screen for the Portal that will take you to the secure message is in the email, but there is no confidential information in the email at all. You must log into the Practice Portal to read your Secure Message, which looks just like an email when you are reading it on the Portal.

The Forms on this Website will be going away!

Because our secure Practice Portal is new, we are going to keep the forms to let you request appointments, refills, etc., on this website for a transition period. But as each one of them says at the top- They are NOT secure, and the emails we send back and forth are not encrypted, and can be read by others with access to your email. So, even though this method of communication is not HIPAA compliant, many of our patients rely on it because it is so much easier than trying to contact us by phone. We will therefore keep it operating until most of you have had the chance to sign up for the Practice Portal.