Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Oct 7;21(10):e13146.
doi: 10.2196/13146.

Difference Between Users and Nonusers of a Patient Portal in Health Behaviors and Outcomes: Retrospective Cohort Study

Jing Huang #  1 , Yong Chen #  1   2   3   4   5 , J Richard Landis  1 , Kevin B Mahoney  1   6
Affiliations

Difference Between Users and Nonusers of a Patient Portal in Health Behaviors and Outcomes: Retrospective Cohort Study

Jing Huang et al. J Med Internet Res. .

Abstract

Background: Patient portals are frequently used in modern health care systems as an engagement and communication tool. An increased focus on the potential value of these communication channels to improve health outcomes is warranted.

Objective: This paper aimed to quantify the impact of portal use on patients' preventive health behavior and chronic health outcomes.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective, observational cohort study of 10,000 patients aged 50 years or older who were treated at the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) from September 1, 2014, to October 31, 2016. The data were sourced from the UPHS electronic health records. We investigated the association between patient portal use and patients' preventive health behaviors or chronic health outcomes, controlling for confounders using a novel cardinality matching approach based on propensity scoring and a subsequent bootstrapping method to estimate the variance of association estimates.

Results: Patient-level characteristics differed substantially between portal users, comprising approximately 59.32% (5932/10000) of the cohort, and nonusers. On average, users were more likely to be younger (63.46 years for users vs 66.08 years for nonusers), white (72.77% [4317/5932] for users vs 52.58% [2139/4068] for nonusers), have commercial insurance (60.99% [3618/5932] for users vs 40.12% [1632/4068] for nonusers), and have higher annual incomes (US $74,172/year for users vs US $62,940/year for nonusers). Even after adjusting for these potential confounders, patient portal use had a positive and clinically meaningful impact on patients' preventive health behaviors but not on chronic health outcomes.

Conclusions: This paper contributes to the understanding of the impact of patient portal use on health outcomes and is the first study to identify a meaningful subgroup of patients' health behaviors that improved with portal use. These findings may encourage providers to promote portal use to improve patients' preventive health behaviors.

Keywords: health behavior; health care providers; health status; patient portals.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A screenshot of the myPennMedicine Web portal.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Bauer UE, Briss PA, Goodman RA, Bowman BA. Prevention of chronic disease in the 21st century: elimination of the leading preventable causes of premature death and disability in the USA. Lancet. 2014 Jul 5;384(9937):45–52. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)60648-6. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Mokdad AH, Marks JS, Stroup DF, Gerberding JL. Actual causes of death in the United States, 2000. J Am Med Assoc. 2004 Mar 10;291(10):1238–45. doi: 10.1001/jama.291.10.1238. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ward BW, Schiller JS, Goodman RA. Multiple chronic conditions among US adults: a 2012 update. Prev Chronic Dis. 2014 Apr 17;11:E62. doi: 10.5888/pcd11.130389. https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/13_0389.htm - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Johnson NB, Hayes LD, Brown K, Hoo EC, Ethier KA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) CDC National Health Report: leading causes of morbidity and mortality and associated behavioral risk and protective factors--United States, 2005-2013. MMWR Suppl. 2014 Oct 31;63(4):3–27. - PubMed
    1. Prince MJ, Wu F, Guo Y, Robledo LM, O'Donnell M, Sullivan R, Yusuf S. The burden of disease in older people and implications for health policy and practice. Lancet. 2015 Feb 7;385(9967):549–62. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61347-7. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources