Are Patient Portals a Blessing or a Curse? WSJ Readers Weigh In

But for everyone who feels empowered by portals, others feel frustrated and disenfranchised by the technology, the information overload or the lack of face-to-face interaction.

We asked WSJ readers to tell us their feelings about patient portals—good or bad. Here are some of their stories.

I love our patient portal. I am a 65-year-old retired man in generally good health but with some minor heart issues and hearing loss. I use our portal for many things, but my favorite feature is being able to view lab and other results, usually the same day as the test. I can view all the categories of bloodwork results charted to show trends from previous tests and whether my results are below or above the normal range. Viewing my bloodwork results before going into my annual physical allows me to be better informed and prepared with my questions for the physical.

My second favorite feature is being able to message my doctors, who respond to me in writing, which helps prevent misunderstandings.

Another top feature for me is being able to read my doctor’s after-visit notes both in medical jargon and in easy-to-read summaries with explanatory links to medical terms.

It sure beats the old days of calling and waiting on long holds or hoping to be available for a return call!

—Wesley Wayne Curtis, Champaign, Ill.

I hate them. They are gatekeepers when all I want to do is ask a question or get physical copies of records. Response time averages two days. It took a week to track down the “department” that actually could make copies. Then I was told via email I had to have a camera in my desktop or phone to take a photo of my face and send it to a facial-recognition portal.

I gave up and called my GP’s office and told them I was driving over to get them and I was happy to show my driver’s license when I got there.

—Alex Scott, Longmont, Colo.

It seems almost every time I use the portal there is a new security system requiring a new multifactor login. Sometimes I just give up.

When looking at tests, many don’t mean anything to me. When I click on the button for more information it often takes me to a blank page.

—Thom Wright, Albuquerque, N.M.

At 43 years old, I recently had emergency open-heart surgery for an ascending aortic dissection. We live in a rural community in southwestern Colorado so I had to be flown to Denver’s UCHealth Anschutz Campus for the surgery.

Since then, I’ve been using the patient portal for everything related to recovery. I send questions, ask for prescription refills, and am able to look over all my test results quickly and conveniently. We also use video calls for scheduled check-ins. While I still value the in-person touch and the ability to talk directly to a human being, these tools have been incredibly helpful for me as a person who lives in a rural community with limited healthcare options. I can live here and enjoy the great quality of life while also still feeling connected to world-class healthcare providers.

—Scott Shine, Durango, Colo.

Love them. They allow me to download all posted information into ChatGPT and have it explain in layman’s terms what the medical information says. The explanations from ChatGPT are so much better than what the medical doctors tell you. It also allows you to verify what the doctors think of the test results versus the ChatGPT analysis.

—Eugene Suslowicz Jr., Leesburg, Fla.

My spouse has six different physicians and has been in four different hospitals owned by different companies. So we have several different portals to access for information. These portals don’t interact and speak to each other so all information that needs to be shared must be printed off for each practice. It is a nightmare.

—Marcia Shultz, Columbus, Ind.

I enjoy using the patient portal because it shows years of medical records, and I can track my health over time. Once I started “Japanese Walking” last fall (alternating three minutes of slow walking with three minutes of faster walking for 30 minutes, four to five days a week) I noticed my blood pressure had decreased on the logs I kept at home. My PCP confirmed that indeed, my blood pressure had dropped closer to the normal range and she cut my medicine by half!

My blood sugar, too, has improved as I paid more attention to my diet and movement. My doctor was able to decrease that medication as well!

These records help me to be more prepared with questions for my doctor. This all makes for a more productive and thorough visit within the short time allotted.

—Cissy Spear, Waltham, Mass.

I am an emergency physician at a busy trauma center, where patients now commonly check laboratory and radiology results via their patient portals before I have a chance to discuss those results with them. This can lead to misunderstandings and unnecessary anxiety.

In a recent case, a patient of mine learned through his portal that his previously cured cancer had returned and metastasized. That is the sort of information a patient should hear from their physician, who can break the news gently, and provide context and prognosis. By the time I was able to discuss the results with him, he had already imagined the worst-case scenario, and was inconsolable. I’m in favor of empowering patients to participate in their healthcare decisions, but some information should be delivered to a patient by their doctor, not a phone app.

—Justin Racht, Spokane, Wash.

Having 10 children, every single patient portal is my nemesis. It is a full-time job managing accounts and passwords. It is maddening when you’re logged in correctly but you can’t find your child’s account and see only your name. Imagine when they turn 18 and a parent no longer has access so then you have twice the logins and need to help your teenager who’s going to college learn how to navigate the portals.

I have portals for their pediatricians, their dentists, their orthopedists from all their sports injuries, their vision doctors, their accounts where we order glasses and contacts, on top of all of my specialty doctors like my OB-GYN, my blood specialist, my primary-care physician.

The thing that irritates me the most is they will now tell you at our dermatologist you must fill out the paperwork 15 minutes ahead of time, but then when you arrive, they make you fill out paperwork again. I have eavesdropped on other patients just losing their minds, saying this is absolutely ridiculous.

—Martha Cook, Peachtree, Ga.

I find medical portals less user-friendly and more opaque than most commercial websites. Some portals use their messaging services to promote themselves rather than restrict messaging to the patient’s health issues. It amounts to advertising that one has to log in to receive, only to find the new message has nothing to do with ongoing healthcare.

—Stephen Struck, Grand Haven, Mich.

I vividly remember many decades during which I would have to call my doctors’ offices and leave voice messages requesting appointments, medical test results, pharmacy prescription renewals, medical records, referrals and just about everything else.

It was time-consuming, inefficient, prone to delays and misunderstandings and bogged down by missed return phone calls, especially before cellphones became universally used. Moreover, I felt like I had to beg or charm the doctor’s secretary or answering service for whatever it was that I needed.

—Arturo Porzecanski, New York

I understand the desire to have access to medical records and information regarding a person’s health, but as a metastatic cancer patient who undergoes CT/MRI scans every eight weeks to monitor for progression, having access to the results with no formal training of how to translate the findings is terrifying to me.

I’ve had to train myself to not look at the report before talking to my doctor for my own mental health, because the anxiety of knowing what is in the reports is sometimes overwhelming.

—Jeffrey Mead, Plainville, Conn.

In 2022, I was diagnosed with breast cancer on the same day my husband got offered a new job in a new city. I started my treatment in Charlotte, N.C., continued it in Philadelphia, and now have treatment in Madison, Wis.

My patient portals are connected across all three health systems, and all of my doctors have been able to see all of my test results and pertinent information so that my care can be continued in each place. I am a strong proponent of a patient portal!

—Robin Hill, Madison, Wis.

Healthcare portals impose a work burden and time sink on the patient. It is another facet of the modern movement to reduce the work of company employees by unloading it onto the customer, like self-checkout, automated chatbots pretending to provide you with solutions when you have any trouble, long phone trees for every office, online booking of appointments, automated texts for confirming appointments and filling out paperwork.

Even if these automated approaches worked effectively (which they frequently don’t), they take away jobs and reduce the quality of life for average Americans. The time we spend dealing with these automated interfaces isn’t only time away from real living, but it induces feelings of helplessness, frustration, and occasionally rage. None of those are conducive to good health.

—Ophelia Papoulas, Austin, Texas

It is creepy that so much personal data is in an app, and likely being sold to data brokers, but having gone through intense cancer treatment for a few years, I don’t know how I would have managed without the portal. There was no way, with my brain fog, I could have remembered everything my oncologists told me and having so much information-—including the visit summary notes-—in one place was an absolute lifesaver. My mother has dementia and lives in another state, so being able to essentially manage her healthcare through her app has also made life infinitely easier.

I suspect they are terrible for privacy, and I dread what the future brings with some big brother company knowing all my intimate health info but I am still grateful for how much they help.

—Anna Welch, New York