A new study from the United States Government Accountability Office shows that relatively few patients electronically access their health information when offered the ability to do so. In 2015, the latest year for which full data is available, only 15% of hospital patients accessed their data through a hospital digital portal and only 30% of patients used a portal provided by their doctor’s office. Patients cited limitations such as the inability to aggregate their health information from multiple sources into a single record.
Since 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has invested over $35 billion in health information technology, including efforts to enhance patient access to and use of electronic health information.
The full study is available on the US GOA website.