Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Oct 25, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 25, 2018 - Dec 20, 2018
Date Accepted: Jun 18, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
What do patients think of viewing their radiology images online?: A pre-intervention survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
Although patient data is available through electronic portals, little information exists about the benefits and/or challenges of providing patients with online access to their radiology images.
Objective:
Our aims were to (1) understand patients’ attitudes towards being able to view their radiology images online and (2) determine what needs to be done in order to ensure the images are helpful and not confusing or stressful.
Methods:
An online survey of consumers was conducted to evaluate attitudes towards online access to personal radiological images.
Results:
We received 105 responses from 686 community members (15%). Ninety-four of 105 consumers (90%) reported a desire to have access to the radiology images within their online patient portal. Eight-seven percent believed that it would help them better understand their medical conditions, and 81% said this would help them feel more in control of their care. Most respondents (71%) said it would help them feel reassured that their doctor was doing the right thing and 64% said it would increase their level of trust in their doctor. Among surveyed patients, 72% valued viewing their radiology images online, while 98% valued their online radiology reports. Most patients (80%) wished to discuss their results with their ordering clinician and 63% wished to discuss with their interpreting radiologist. Four percent wished to share their images on social media. The biggest potential concern among 24% was that the images would cause confusion.
Conclusions:
A large majority of surveyed patients desired the ability to view their radiology images online, and anticipated many benefits and few risks. Healthcare organizations with EHRs and online patient portals should consider augmenting their existing portals with this highly-desired feature. To avoid the biggest patient concern, radiology reports should accompany images. Patients wanted to discuss their results with their ordering physician and their interpreting radiologist. Some even would like to share results on social media. Further research on the actual experience with such a tool will be needed. Clinical Trial: Non-RCT Study.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.