A conversation between Alies Maybee and Anna Greenberg
Anna Greenberg: One of the widest chasms in digital health care today is the divide between people’s wish to access their own medical records electronically and their ability to do so. According to a 2018 Canada Health Infoway survey, 74% of Ontario residents who currently have no access would like electronic access to their health records, and only 31% currently can access their own health records.
One of the most convenient ways for patients to access their medical information is through a patient portal. These have existed for more than a decade at individual hospitals and are now becoming more widespread – but still only to provide information from one institution.
Depending on the portal, patients can view:
• Physician notes, personal medical history and medication records
• Laboratory and test results
• Appointment details
• Electronic means of communicating with your physician
• General medical and health information
On our own patient and family advisory council, only a few members have had experience with such a portal. Those who did told us it made a world of difference. Others talked of struggling to assemble this type of information themselves.
Alies Maybee: I recently attended a conference hosted by Canada Health Infoway where Julie Drury, chair of the Ontario Minister’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, described the challenges of compiling and managing information about her daughter’s care at multiple hospitals. She showed the huge mound of paper binders of medical information that she had to cart around and keep updated. And this was only a few years ago. I think patient portals have the potential to significantly ease this burden, but portals need to give patients access to more of their information and be better connected with each other when they exist at different care settings.