Patients increasingly want access to their medical records, including radiology reports. As a result, there has been dramatic growth in the number of online portals or gateways where patients can access notes, send messages, see laboratory results, and read radiology reports, according to Dr. Andrew Gunn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
"Early survey-based data suggest that these portals are underutilized by patients, at least in regard to reading their radiology reports," Gunn told AuntMinnie.com. "However, objective data are limited."
So the researchers sought to quantify patient use of their institution's patient portal from March 2017 to March 2018. They found that the online portal was accessed by approximately 35,000 unique users per month, with about 6,500 unique views of the portal's radiology tab -- meaning fewer than 20% of the users accessed the radiology tab.
Once they were within the radiology tab, users spent an average of approximately 90 seconds there, and more than 75% interacted with the radiology results page. In other findings, radiology-related searches represented only 0.1% of total patient searches on the portal, according to the researchers.
"So, even though patients are using portals at a high rate, there is room for growth when it comes to using them for reading radiology reports," Gunn said.
