Navigating medical results in your inbox: Empowerment or anxiety?

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Old: You go for a test. You go home. You wait until your next appointment when your doctor will tell you the findings and, more importantly, what it all means. If your test was done on day 1 and your next appointment isn't until day 7, you’d never know that the results had actually been finalized on day 5. But a two-day delay didn’t matter most of the time. So, it worked, for the most part.

New: Phone-based apps like MyChart offer patients immediate access to their test results. This relatively new innovation seems to have quickly gone from fringe to mainstream. This technology necessarily mixes convenience with complexity, though, especially for patients waiting for critical results like a biopsy which may either confirm cancer, or bring a sigh of relief.

Gone are the days when test results were a tightly held secret until your next doctor's appointment. Now, a notification can suddenly appear in your app, at any hour of the day. A pathologist catching up on a backlog of results might finalize a report while working from home after putting her kids to bed. To you, that might mean a new result shows up in your inbox on a Friday night. Patients often struggle over what to do when this happens.

The Dilemma: To Check or Not to Check?

I think most people initially thought they would not check their MyChart results (or similar portals) before their doctor could explain things, be it on the phone, Zoom, or in person. But it seems that few people can resist the temptation, regardless of the time of day. I can’t help but wonder how many people have received confusing (or even alarming) test results in the middle of the night because they got up to use the restroom and glanced at their phones. Now it’s 3am and they’re sitting on the toilet Googling terms like “eccentric nuclei” and “clumped chromatin.” And, these days, with ChatGPT at the ready, they might be mere seconds away from a reasonable interpretation of all that medical jargon filling their screens. But what to do next?

I can hardly blame anyone for being curious. Should they open the app and confront the raw data alone? That urge to know—immediate gratification—can prove irresistible. But the aftermath should be considered. Without professional guidance and the insights of an experienced practitioner, interpreting results can lead to undue stress, if not panic. Is it really better to know immediately rather than waiting until your doctor can contextualize and explain what might be complicated results?

Even Knowing It’s There Is Stressful.

For many, the knowledge that a result is just waiting in their inbox is enough to cause significant distress, even if they decide not to open the app and read the results. That anxiety can become all-consuming. Some people end up checking the results, even though they had not wanted or intended to. Some may wish they had not.

My Take.

I am a believer in patient autonomy. For anyone who has an important test, their patient portal/app preferences should be specifically solicited, confirmed, and honored. Some people do not want to even know a result exists let alone what it is until they can speak with their doctor in real time. Others want immediate information. As a physician, I might opt for the “tell me everything as soon as you know it.” Alternatively, I might actually do precisely the opposite, precisely because I am a physician. (We don’t actually know everything about everything and sometimes a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.)

I think patients should get to decide from options like:

Provide me my results:

A) In MyChart/patient portal app as soon as possible.

B) In MyChart if my doctor and I can’t meet or speak by [date].

C) At my next appointment which is [date of scheduled follow up]”

There are many iterations. We should be able to tailor how you receive the results of your tests. After all, you own that information.

Your take! Please share your experience and your views with us.

Do you prefer the immediate access to your medical data? Or do you miss the days of receiving news directly from your doctor even if it meant waiting a bit longer?

Have you had good experiences with a patient portal/app like MyChart? Nightmares? Has access for AI (like ChatGPT) changed how you use these tools? How have you coped with information you have received at unexpected times? Have you found yourself seeking interpretations from sources other than your physician—be it other healthcare professionals in your close circle of contacts, or Google, or AI tools like GPT?

Chime in…

I honestly do not know the best answer for everyone and your personal stories are going to be key here. I anticipate that your insights and experiences will influence how I and many others feel about this all! So, I want to cordially invite you to discuss the benefits, the drawbacks, and everything in between of having immediate access to your test results.

Let’s have a hearty and frank discussion on this. I look forward to hearing from you!

Yours,

—Dr. Jeremy

Usually the Comments section is open to paying members only, but this one is open everyone in this community. So please share this with anyone you think might wish to contribute to this conversation. That said…

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