Patient Portal Adoption, Use, and Satisfaction among U.S. Adults in Late-stage COVID-19 Pandemic

Patient portals have been around for decades, but only became widely available to patients in the last 10 years as cultural shifts (i.e., patient-centered care) and policies (e.g., HITECH Act) encouraged healthcare organizations to offer patients electronic access to their medical records, as well as digital health services such as secure messaging with their healthcare team. Unfortunately, despite high interest among patients, research has documented generally slow uptake and low levels of use. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought new incentives to adopt and use portals (e.g., to access video visits, COVID-19 test results). While evidence from some healthcare organizations suggests that this has translated to higher patient engagement with portals, there have not been national-level studies to investigate this. Our cross-sectional survey addresses that gap by assessing a sample of U.S. adults' use, perceptions of, and satisfaction with patient portals at the end of 2021. We found high levels of portal awareness, adoption, and use, as well as satisfaction among survey participants that, in many cases, exceeds what has been found in past surveys of U.S. adults. In addition, while we did find some evidence of some disparities in portal adoption and use (e.g., lower adoption among those with lower levels of education completed), many of the factors that have been found in previous literature such as race were not associated with portal engagement in this study. Our results provide early evidence that there may finally be some progress in portal adoption and use, but more research is needed to understand what is driving this and whether and how this progress can be maintained post-pandemic. Addressing common patient concerns and suggestions may be one path forward.