As shared access uptake remains low, the Coalition for Care Partners, and three healthcare delivery organizations, co-designed an initiative promoting shared access to the patient portals of older adults.
Patient Portals
A Proof-of-Concept Study for Patient Use of Open Notes with Large Language Models
Can AI chatbots help patients make sense of their medical notes? This first-of-its-kind study published in JAMIA Open finds that with the right prompt, large language models may become powerful partners in understanding complex health information.
Repeated Access to Patient Portal While Awaiting Test Results and Patient-Initiated Messaging
A new study found that patients often refresh the portal while awaiting test results—especially for routine tests. This behavior is linked to increased messaging, suggesting that individual worry may drive communication more than the test itself.
Identifying, Engaging, and Supporting Care Partners in Clinical Settings: Protocol for a Patient Portal–Based Intervention
This study aimed to implement a novel patient portal–based intervention to identify, engage, and support care partners in clinical settings. Early results suggest that the intervention could be an easily scalable and adaptable method of identifying and supporting care partners in clinical settings.
A Multisite Demonstration of Shared Access to Older Adults’ Patient Portals
In this quality improvement study of 16,005 patients from 3 diverse US sites, new shared access registration was unchanged; however, use of shared access functionality among registered care partners increased. Care partners logged in more frequently, viewed more laboratory results and clinical notes, and scheduled more visits after the demonstration.
Advancing cancer care through digital access in the USA: a state-of-the-art review of patient portals in oncology
Patient portal use among patients with cancer has increased significantly in recent years. This state-of-the-art review seeks to address and analyse literature involving patient portal use by patients with cancer and their care partners.
Study: Leveraging a patient portal to help patients formulate their healthcare goals
This study tested self-directed tools for older adults with chronic conditions to identify healthcare priorities. Website engagement was low, but 26% completed an Epic previsit questionnaire. Most found it helpful, and physicians noted it facilitated end-of-life care discussions.
Shared access to adults’ patient portals: A secret shopper exercise
Our secret shopper exercise unveiled noteworthy variability in the experiences of 18 individuals attempting to grant or receive shared access to the patient portal, highlighting multiple barriers and facilitators to shared access. The findings underscore the imperative for cross- and intra-organizational collaboration aimed at learning from the diverse experiences of patients, care partners, clinicians, and staff, and disseminating best practices.
Patients need access to their medical records—now
Despite initial professional resistance and policy delays, countries like Denmark, Estonia, Sweden, and the US have demonstrated that the benefits of full record access outweigh the risks. Patients globally are calling for interactive, user-friendly portals to access and correct their medical records, emphasizing that this is crucial for self-care, particularly in the post-pandemic era where healthcare access has declined.
Patient portals fail to collect structured information about who else is involved in a person’s care
“Shared access” uses separate identity credentials to differentiate between patients and care partner portal users. EHR vendors must recognize that both patients and care partners are important users of their products and acknowledge and support the critical contributions of care partners as distinct from patients.
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