Patient Engagement with Radiology Report Content: A Retrospective Analysis of 60,572 Radiology Report Views

Area of Science:

• Radiology
• Health Informatics
• Patient Engagement

Background:

• Online patient portals increasingly provide access to radiology reports.
• Patient comprehension of complex medical terminology remains a challenge.
• Plain language explanations are crucial for improving health literacy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate patient utilization of plain language content within online radiology reports.
• To assess patient interaction with accessible medical terminology explanations.

Main Methods:

• Webpage-style radiology reports with patient-centered content and hyperlinked explanations were deployed.
• Data collected included annotated terms, clicked terms, and click counts over a one-year period.
• Terms were categorized using the RadLex Tree Browser for analysis.

Main Results:

• Over 60,000 reports, 380,798 clicks occurred on 4,264,663 annotated terms (8.9% click rate).
• High-frequency terms (≥1000 annotations) showed click rates ranging from 0.1% to 63.2%.
• Average click rates varied by RadLex category, with clinical findings at 16.7% and properties at 7.9%.

Conclusions:

• Web technologies offer valuable insights into patient interaction with online health information.
• Patient engagement with patient-centered radiology report content demonstrates significant variability.
• Tailored approaches may be needed to optimize patient understanding of radiology reports.