How Many Payer Portals Do Practices Use? 61.0% Use 7+

MGMA's March 31, 2026 poll of 252 practices found that 61.0% of practices have staff open seven or more payer portals every week. One in four practices (26.0%) reports 11 or more.

Each portal has its own login, its own timeout rules and its own way of showing claim status. Billing staff carry that load before they start the work they were hired to do.

How many portals practices open each week

MGMA published the poll on April 1, 2026. It asked practice leaders how many payer portals staff access in a typical week.

Portals accessed per week	Share of practices
1 to 3	10.0%
4 to 6	29.0%
7 to 10	35.0%
11 or more	26.0%

Source: MGMA Stat poll, March 31, 2026, 252 applicable responses. Base: practices answering the poll.

The 7 to 10 band is the largest single group. Only 10.0% of practices keep their weekly count at three or fewer.

MGMA also asked what drives the portal visits. Respondents named eligibility checks first and prior authorizations second. Appeals and claim or payment status lookups came after those two.

What staff do on the phone and in the portals

A separate MGMA Stat poll of 294 practices, taken March 10, 2026, asked which phone task takes the most staff time. Eligibility and prior authorization took 45.0% of the votes. Scheduling followed at 31.0%, intake at 9.0%, prescription refills at 6.0% and other tasks at 9.0%.

The same two tasks lead the portal list and the phone list. Staff move between the two channels when a portal lacks an answer.

The American Medical Association put numbers on the prior authorization part. Its survey of 1,000 physicians, fielded in late 2024, found 39 requests per physician each week and 13 hours of physician and staff time to complete them. In that survey, 40.0% of practices had staff who work only on prior authorizations.

The AMA's 2025 Prior Authorization Physician Survey, also of 1,000 physicians, put the weekly count at 40 requests. It found that 32.0% of physicians report frequent denials.

Re-keying the same data

Portals rarely connect to the practice management system. Staff read a screen and type the result into another screen.

Weave's 2026 State of Healthcare Pulse Survey asked 285 owners, office managers and front desk staff about manual work. The sample covers dentistry, specialty medical, optometry and veterinary practices, so it is not a pure physician sample. In it, 63.0% of respondents spend one hour or more each day on manual data entry, and 32.0% spend two hours or more. Duplicate data entry affects workflow at 80.0% of those practices, and 70.0% lack integrated software systems.

Staffing makes the load heavier. In the same survey, 64.0% of respondents had a staff shortage in the past 12 months, and 48.0% had one open at the time of the survey. Over half said an open position takes three or more weeks to fill. Some 24.0% had cut patient volume because they lacked staff.

Where electronic transactions already work

The 2025 CAQH Index, released February 19, 2026, draws on more than 600 provider organizations and health plans that cover 63.0% of insured lives. It reports that electronic transactions and better data exchange avoided $258 billion in administrative costs in 2024, a 17.0% rise from the prior year.

Adoption differs by transaction type. Prior authorization has the lowest rate of the medical transactions CAQH listed.

Medical transaction	Electronic share, 2023	Electronic share, 2025
Prior authorization	31.0%	40.0%
Claim status inquiry	74.0%	81.0%
Claim payment	73.0%	78.0%

Source: CAQH Index 2025, as reported by AJMC, July 12, 2026. Base: medical-plan and provider transactions in the Index sample.

CAQH sizes the remaining gap at $18.7 billion for medical administrative work. Practices that still check status by portal sit in that gap.

What CMS now requires of payers

CMS finalized its Interoperability and Prior Authorization rule (CMS-0057-F) on January 17, 2024. Covered payers must decide standard requests within 7 calendar days and expedited requests within 72 hours. Most operating provisions started January 1, 2026, including the duty to give a specific reason for each denial.

The rule covers Medicare Advantage plans, state Medicaid and CHIP fee-for-service programs, Medicaid and CHIP managed care plans, and qualified health plan issuers on the federal exchanges. It requires four FHIR-based APIs, with most API deadlines on January 1, 2027. The Prior Authorization API is the one meant to let practices submit requests from their own systems instead of a portal.

Practices have not yet seen much change. In the AMA survey released May 13, 2026, only 33.0% of 1,000 physicians believed the 2025 insurer pledge on prior authorization would bring meaningful change. In the late 2024 AMA survey, 16.0% said insurer changes had cut their authorization volume.

MGMA's 2026 Regulatory Burden Report surveyed more than 230 group practice executives, 60.0% of them from independent practices. It named prior authorization, Medicare Advantage requirements and quality reporting as the top drains on staff time.

Sources

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