Patient Portal Communication Lowers 30-Day Presentation to the Emergency Department

Introduction: The patient portal (PP) is a powerful tool that allows patients to see their medications, test results, imaging, upcoming appointments, medical bills, and price estimates. In our prior work, we demonstrated that PP utilization was associated with lower odds of 30-day readmission. In this study, we sought to better understand how usage of the portal’s communication feature, specifically, impacts clinical outcomes for patients that underwent spine surgery.

Methods: To quantify the association between communication feature utilization and 30-day presentation to the Emergency Department (ED) and readmission, a logistic regression model was used with presentation to ED (yes/no) or readmission (yes/no) as the outcome and communication feature utilization as the predictor. The models were adjusted for sociodemographic variables (race and age). Odds ratios (OR) were calculated.

Results: Of the 7358 patients included in this study, 476 (6.5%) returned to the ED within 30 days and 5523 (75.1%) utilized the communication feature. After adjusting for race and age, not utilizing the communication feature of the patient portal was associated with 2.43 times the odds of presentation to the ED (OR: 2.43; 95% CI: 2.00-2.95). Additionally, 220 (46.2%) of the patients who presented to the ED within 30 days were subsequently readmitted. After adjusting for race and age, there was no association between communication feature utilization and readmission for patients presenting to the ED (OR: 1.26; 95% CI: 0.86-1.83).

Conclusion : Spine patients that utilize the communication feature on the PP have lower odds of 30-day presentation to the ED. Communication between patient and surgeon through the portal may prevent expensive and unnecessary ED visits post-operatively.