Patients Want Online Access To Health Information

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

A survey of US patients has found that the majority want access to both their doctors and their documents online.

“If it were up to Internet-savvy Americans, more of them would be emailing or sending Facebook messages to their doctors to chat about their health,” explains a release announcing a Web study published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

According to study’s results, more than half of U.S. residents expressed a desire for online access to health information through their provider’s website. Despite this, few reported currently accessing this type of information online.

iHealth Beat reports 57 percent of survey respondents indicated they wanted the option of using their physicians’ sites to access medical information, but only 7 percent do now. Additionally, 46 percent of respondents were interested in using Web-based tools for prescriptions, but only 7 percent reported currently doing so.

Thirty-seven percent of respondents reported emailing their doctor in the past six months and 18 percent reported contacting their doctor through Facebook. Study author Joy Lee of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health says the latter finding is surprising as most institutions actively discourage social media contact with individual patients due to privacy and liability concerns.

Patients were most likely to contact their providers online if they:

• cared for others
• had chronic health conditions
• reported a higher income
• were Non-white
• were Younger than 45 years old

“The findings highlight the gap between patient interest for online communication and what physicians may currently provide,” concluded researchers. “Improving and accelerating the adoption of secure Web messaging systems is a possible solution that addresses both institutional concerns and patient demand.”