Nearly all patients (87 percent) want electronic access to their health records, but just 37 percent have access through a patient portal, according to a report from athenahealth.
athenahealth pulled insight from its cloud-based healthcare network athenaNet, which includes 3,500 medical groups with 7.5 million patients. Based on this data, athenahealth foumd the average overall portal adoption rate across the country is 29 percent.
Here is the average rate of portal adoption across seven specialties.
1. OB/GYN: 50 percent
2. Allergy/immunology: 34 percent
3. Family medicine: 27 percent
4. Orthopedics: 25 percent
5. Pediatrics: 23 percent
6. Cardiology: 19 percent
7. Surgery: 18 percent
"In the next five years, I think we'll see a significant increase in portal adoption driven by market pressure and by clinical need. Patients are increasingly demanding electronic health data and online access to their care teams, and in many markets providers will need to offer those services to remain competitive," Josh Gray, vice president of athenaResearch at athenahealth, told Becker's Hospital Review. Click here to read the full interview.