How to invite a patient to the portal
One click from the patient record, an invitation valid for 7 days. When to send it, how to check it worked, and what to do when something is off.
In the portal the patient sees their appointments, treatment plan, home exercises, summaries and documents. They do not set that access up themselves — you grant it from their record. The whole action is one button, but it is worth knowing when to press it and how to check anything came of it.
How to do it
Pick the right moment
The best moment is right after the first visit: the patient remembers the conversation, and something concrete is waiting for them in the portal — the exercise plan, the summary, the date of the next visit. An invitation sent six months after the last visit usually disappears into the inbox.
Check the e-mail address on the patient record
Open Patients, find the person and go into their record. Verify the e-mail address — the invitation goes there and nowhere else. An empty or out-of-date address means the message simply will not be created.
Click Invite to Portal
The Invite to Portal button sits in the header of the patient record and appears only while the patient has no account yet. Once an account exists it disappears — that is how you can tell access is already there.
The click sends the message straight away and shows a confirmation with the address it went to. If the record has no e-mail address, you will see a message telling you what to fill in — nothing is sent.
Know what the patient receives
The message has the subject You've been invited to the patient portal — the clinic name, a header with the clinic logo, one sentence of explanation and an Accept Invitation button. The footer carries the clinic name and phone number, if they are filled in in the settings.
The message goes out in the language of the person who clicked the button.
Watch the 7 days
The invitation is valid for 7 days and works once only. Clicking Invite to Portal again within that time re-sends the same link — it does not invalidate the previous one, so the patient can use any of the messages they received. The patient signs up (or signs in) with the same e-mail address the invitation was sent to — with a different address the invitation will not be accepted.
Invite one at a time
There is no bulk send. The group actions on the appointment list cover sending a reminder, exporting to a file and marking a no-show — a portal invitation is not among them, and it is not on the patient list either. When migrating a database from other software, plan this as work spread over time, not as a single action.
When something does not work
I cannot see the Invite to Portal button
What this means: The patient already has a linked account — the button appears only on a record with no account.
The patient says they never got the message
What this means: Usually a spam filter or a wrong address on the record. The message is sent in the background, so its absence stops nothing in the panel.
Who has access
Clinic Admin Receptionist PractitionerThe invitation is sent by anyone entitled to edit the patient record. The send leaves an entry in the audit log together with who initiated it.
Related
- Patient portal — what the patient sees after signing in.
- How to accept an invitation — the same route through the patient's eyes.
- PDF exports — the fallback when a patient has no portal.