According to the HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) there has been a significant increase in the number of patients who are accessing their medical records through patient portals or smartphone apps. Providing patients with easy access to their electronic health records empowers them to make informed decisions about their health and track their progress toward health-related goals, which translates into better patient outcomes. According to the ONC, other benefits include decreased healthcare costs and stronger patient-physician relationships.

In 2022, around three in five individuals who were offered access to their health records via an app or patient portal chose to access them, which is a 46% increase from 2020. In 2022, around three in four patients were offered either online access to their medical records or app-based access, which is a 24% increase from 2020. More than half of patients who were offered access viewed their health records at least three times, with one in six individuals accessing their records on six or more occasions. Only one in five individuals who were offered online or app-based access to their records did not view their health records in the past 12 months, which is a reduction of around 50% from 2017.

The ONC Cures Act Final Rule, published in 2020, sought to increase patient and provider access to healthcare records via smartphone apps via secure standardized application programming interfaces (APIs). Access to electronic health information through online patient portals has been increasing for several years, and the ONC’s rules that encourage access to electronic health information and prohibit information blocking are helping to increase access to health records and app-based access is growing.

48% of patients chose to access their online records only via a website and 19% only used an app, with 32% using a combination of the two. Individuals who used apps to view their health data were much more likely to access their health records frequently, compared to individuals who only used a website – 42% versus 28%. The most common reasons for accessing online medical records or patient portals were to view test results (90%) and clinical notes (70%). One in three patients chose to download their healthcare data and one in five sent their health data to a third party.

Healthcare providers that offered a patient portal saw much higher levels of access to electronic medical records (81%), especially when they also encouraged their patients to use the portals (83%), compared to a national average of 68%. Usage of patient portals was considerably more common with white patients, 70% of whom used a patient portal to access their records, compared to only 60% of black patients and 57% of Hispanic patients.

While the data are encouraging they show there is still room for improvement. Just under half of individuals who were offered online access to their health records chose not to view them in 2022, and the number of black and Hispanic patients using online portals or apps is much lower than white patients. Healthcare providers should try to promote equitable access to patient portals, recommend using the portals, and explain the benefits.

Relatively few patients are downloading their health records and even fewer are sending their records to a third party, which suggests a lack of education of patients and providers on these features and the benefits. While only 2% of patients used a health app to combine medical records from the portals of more than one healthcare provider, in 2022 the ONC was still implementing the Cures Act Final Rule provisions and that percentage is expected to increase significantly in 2023.

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