Behavior Shifts in Patient Portal Usage During and After Policy Changes Around Test Result Delivery and Notification

Because of the 21st Century Cures Act, many health systems now release all test results into patient portals immediately. To investigate if changes in access to test results shifted patient portal usage, we used data from the electronic health record to evaluate how patients behaved after this policy change and a subsequent policy adjustment requiring patients to opt in for notifications about new test results. We found that following institutional compliance with the Cures Act, proportions of patients who scheduled a new appointment and messaged their clinician after accessing a new test result increased, both by 4.5%. After removing automatic notifications of new results, the proportion of patients who scheduled a new appointment increased by 2.1%, and the proportion of patients who had telemedicine encounters decreased by 0.8%. Our work identified changes in patient behavior that track how policy changes map to burden for clinicians and information-seeking behavior in patients.