Patient-Friendly Test Results and Patient-Initiated Messaging Among Adult Outpatients.

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Patient Engagement
• Clinical Communication

Background:

• Patients often lack context to interpret medical test results, leading to confusion and unnecessary communication.
• Improving patient understanding of results is crucial for engagement and efficient healthcare workflows.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate if patient-friendly educational formats for laboratory test results decrease patient-initiated messages.
• To test the hypothesis that enhanced result presentation reduces patient portal messaging volume.

Main Methods:

• A quality improvement study utilized an interrupted time series design at an academic medical center.
• Patient portal results for high-volume tests (e.g., metabolic panels, CBC, thyroid) were presented in an educational format.
• An interrupted time series analysis assessed changes in patient messaging before and after implementation.

Main Results:

• No significant overall decrease in patient-initiated messages within 24 hours of result release was observed.
• A statistically significant decrease in messaging occurred for tests ordered in primary care.
• Messaging increased for microbial, antibody, and PCR tests ordered outside of primary care.

Conclusions:

• Releasing test results in a patient-friendly educational format did not lead to a clinically meaningful reduction in overall patient messages.
• While primary care test messaging decreased, other test categories saw an increase, indicating complex interactions.
• Further research is needed to develop effective strategies supporting patient understanding without disrupting clinical workflows.