What is the patient portal?

The Patient Portal is a secure platform where patients handle everything relevant to their care, including appointment booking, questionnaires and monitoring tasks. All in one visit, improving engagement and cutting practice admin.

What Can It Do for Your Practice?

Enable patients to self-book appointments - all pending booking links in one place
Display patient tasks for monitoring and screening – fully configurable!
Show practice contact details in one convenient place
Allow patients to complete questionnaires that are currently pending.

To learn more about how questionnaires work and how to configure them, click here.

How patients access the portal

Patients can enter the patient portal via:

QR code on a patient portal poster in practice
A self-booking appointment link
A questionnaire link
The website directly here

💡 One portal, everything visible

Regardless of which link a patient uses to access the Patient Portal, they will see all of their outstanding tasks, not just the task linked to the original invitation. For example, a patient who opens an appointment booking link can also choose to complete any outstanding questionnaires without needing a separate invitation.

What the patient sees in the portal

How do I configure the patient portal?

Patient Tasks

When Patient Tasks are enabled, patients visiting the portal see a list of the tasks they're currently eligible to complete. These are either questionnaires or tasks that give instructions.

A task only appears if the patient meets the criteria for a relevant clinical rule that's enabled for your organisation. For example, only patients with asthma can view the Asthma Control Test task, and only if you have a rule enabled requiring that group to complete an Asthma Control Test.

Configure Patient Tasks

Abtrace admin users can:

Head over to the User Management Portal
Select your organisation.
Enter the NHS email address where completed patient questionnaire responses should be sent. This could be a shared Organisation email address.
For guidance on adding an Organisation Email to Abtrace, read this support article.
Go to the Patient Portal section. At the top, you’ll find the main Patient Tasks on/off switch, which allows you to enable or disable all patient tasks/questionnaires. Below this is a searchable library of every available task, each with its own on/off switch so you can choose which specific tasks patients can access.
Use each task's own toggle to control whether it appears in the patient portal. Turning a task Off stops patients from engaging with it altogether

Gather information via Questionnaire

For each enabled task, choose how the patient completes it:

Gather information via a pre-set questionnaire, (where available), or
Give instructions to help the patient complete the task. You can customise the message shown for each task status.

If you select Gather information, eligible patients can complete a pre-set questionnaire through the Patient Portal, provided one is available for that task.

Not all tasks have a linked questionnaire. For example, an ECG task can only use Give instructions, whereas an ACT task can be configured to either Give instructions or Gather information.

To enable a questionnaire:

Select the relevant Patient Task.
Choose Gather information.
Make sure the relevant clinical rules are enabled for your organisation.

📖 Read this support article to find out more about how questionnaires work.

Give instructions to complete a Task

If you select Give instructions, you can use the default wording or customise the message shown to patients based on the status of their task.

To customise the instructions:

Select the relevant Patient Task.
Choose Give instructions.
Enter your preferred wording in the text box displayed beneath each task status.

⏳Note: Task configuration relies on overnight data processing, so any changes may take until the following day to appear in the Patient Portal.

Contact Page

You can customise what contact information to make available on the patient portal.

In the User Management Portal

Select your organisation on the left
Select the Patient Portal section. At the top of that, you will find a sub-section for Patient Tasks & Practice Contact Details.
Select the Practice contact details tab

Enter the contact information you wish your patients to have available. All fields are optional; however, we do advise supplying at least a means to contact the practice.

You may preview how the information will display to a patient by clicking on the Preview Patient Contact Page link.

🔒 Is It Secure?

Yes. The portal is fully compliant with NHS data protection standards and integrates seamlessly with the Abtrace Proactive Monitoring Tool.