The Impact of an Electronic Portal on Patient Encounters in Primary Care: Interrupted Time-Series Analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Electronic patient portals are online applications that allow patients access to their own health information, a form of asynchronous virtual care. The long-term impact of portals on the use of traditional primary care services is unclear, but it is an important question at this juncture, when portals are being incorporated into many primary care practices.

Objective

We sought to investigate how an electronic patient portal affected the use of traditional, synchronous primary care services over a much longer time period than any existing studies and to assess the impact of portal messaging on clinicians' workload.

Methods

We conducted a propensity-score-matched, open-cohort, interrupted time-series evaluation of a primary care portal from its implementation

SUBMITTER: Ferguson K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9941901 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature