Patient portals and online electronic medical record access have been shown to improve medication adherence and patient engagement. Patients with chronic conditions have taken advantage of patient portals at a higher rate than their healthy counterparts — 30 percent to 24 percent, according to a new survey from Accenture.
Despite patients with chronic conditions showing an increased desire to access and manage their health information, many do not use patient portals. According to the survey, many simply don't know how — 55 percent of survey respondents said not knowing how to log on was the main reason they don't use patient portals.
For 17 percent of the respondents, trust in their providers is keeping them offline. This subset believes the information in their medical records is accurate, and therefore sees no reason to log on to a patient portal to view the information. Among cancer patients, this rate jumped to 31 percent.
Survey results are based on responses from 2,000 U.S. adults.
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