Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Mar 22, 2024
Date Accepted: Apr 1, 2025
Patient portal registrations at a Swiss tertiary referral hospital over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic: A retrospective data analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
To enhance patient empowerment, the Cantonal Hospital of Lucerne launched a patient portal (MyChart) in December 2019, granting patients access to their medical records, diagnoses and lab results. Months later, the first COVID-19 case was reported in Switzerland with the pandemic dramatically affecting health care services.
Objective:
This analysis aims to investigate how the pattern of patient portal registrations evolved during the pandemic, with reference to the spread of COVID-19, as well as local and federal policies.
Methods:
A retrospective exploratory design was used to analyse the distribution of patient portal registrations after its introduction at the study site on December 1st, 2019 until July 31st, 2022. The 7-day mean of registrations was plotted alongside the number of administered COVID-19 tests and COVID-19 vaccinations.
Results:
A total of 126,519 patients registered on the patient portal during the study period, with a slightly higher proportion of females (52.3%) and 11.3% were ≥65 years old. The daily registration rate differed substantially over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic whereby four peaks with >200 registrations per day were identified. The first and third peak coincide with high COVID-19 testing rates in autumn 2020 and 2021, whereas the second and fourth peak coincide with the release of the vaccine in spring 2021 and booster at the end of 2021. Regarding patient portal users ≥65 years old, only two major peaks in registrations can be identified which coincide with the release of the COVID-19 vaccine and booster.
Conclusions:
The COVID-19 pandemic with its disease dynamic, including testing and vaccinations, seems to have influenced the number of patient portal registrations. In addition, it appears that patients aged ≥65 predominantly registered for COVID-19 vaccines. Clinical Trial: EKNZ-ID REQ-2021-00242
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.