The statement that patients like viewing their lab test results online might seem like a given. Duh — not getting test results quickly enough is one of patients’ biggest gripes about doctor’s visits. Of course they want results online!
But when CMS, CDC and the HHS Office of Civil Rights jointly proposed a federal rule that would require laboratories to report test results directly to patients upon request back in 2011, they were met with some opposition. There’s worry among some groups that leaving patients to interpret their lab results themselves would cause confusion and potentially even add to the physician workload because of aggressive follow-up actions by worried patients.
Two senior leaders on the Kaiser Permanente website wanted to see whether that was true. They surveyed a cohort of KP members who had used the system’s personal health record platform to view at least one test result online within the past year and published the results online at the Journal of Participatory Medicine.
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Since it first became available to members in all regions in 2008, the lab results feature has been the most frequently used feature on Kaiser Permanente’s PHR, the authors wrote.
More than 1,500 patients responded to the survey, and most reported feeling satisfied, calm and relieved after viewing their lab results online. That was especially true among patients whose doctors had talked with them beforehand about what to expect.
The researchers also asked what follow-up actions patients took after viewing their results. Most common among the responses were talking with family or friends, looking up information online or making a graph of test results over time. Some 14 percent said they emailed a doctor, 2 percent called and 5 percent made a doctor’s appointment.
“Of the members in our study who emailed or telephoned their doctors or made doctor’s appointments, more did not have preparatory conversation with their doctors than did prior to viewing their results. However, the relatively small number of members engaging in these activities made significant differences difficult to detect.”
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There are definitely a few flaws in the study — for example, the researchers distributed an email survey to a group of some of the most already engaged patients, and 86 percent of them reported being in good or very good health, meaning they were probably not getting seriously negative lab results. But the authors hope the data is reassuring to physician practices who are considering adding this feature to their patient portals, or who offer only limited or delayed access to lab results.
“Delaying access to lab test results has been shown anecdotally in the KP system to give rise to increased phone calls and complaints to medical offices, as patients worry most about the results they cannot see, assuming something must be wrong,” the authors wrote.
The HHS said last month that the federal rule for direct access to lab results was delayed in the HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule because HHS anticipated publishing an amendment to CLIA regulations in the near future.
[Image credit: Journal of Participatory Medicine]
