Patient and Provider Perceptions of Patient Portal Usage
| Thematic Domain | Patienta | Primary Care Provider |
|---|---|---|
| Attitude | User: When the MyChart thing came, that was just great. I love it. Nonuser: Listen, I know how to read, so I’d rather get everything by mail. | I’ve had more elder, more elderly tell me…This whole smartphone thing isn’t for me. I still got a flip phone. But even then, sometimes, they’ll be like I have a daughter that has a computer. I’m going to get her to sign up for it. |
| Behavioral intention | User: I did my routine. I called the nurse and I find out just, you know, like that. So, I don’t know if they’re going to text me or call me with information. They probably would but I never ask. | And I have really found that you can’t judge it by age. I’ve had plenty people in their 20s say they don’t want to be on the portal. I have plenty of patients in their 80s who are on the portal who love it. So, you really can’t judge by age. |
| Perceived behavioral control (subdomains facilitating conditions and controllability) | User: I use MyOchsner mostly on my cellphone because of convenience. (facilitating conditions) Nonuser: Being home by myself, it's really rough for me with computers and cell phones. And with the COVID, everything is online, online, online, and it frustrates me. (controllability) | I look at their chart to say, “Hey, I see you’re active. Are you still able to get on?” Because I don’t want to send them results or messages and then they can’t ever see it. And some of them will say, “Oh, I forgot my username, forgot my password.” Not all of them have, you know, the newest phones where you can use finger touch or face recognition. So the ones that still need to remember that, yes, I find that some of them do have trouble remembering. (facilitating conditions) |
| Perceived ease of use | User: It saves talking on the phone or going to the doctor and bothering somebody. You can just push a few flip flops there and wait and hear “Ding dong” when it's ready for you. | It needs to be a lot more visually simple. There should not be a drop-down menu that takes up the entire computer screen. |
| Perceived usefulness | User: So the fact that they had a system that could consolidate all of that…It made it easier for me to manage all my co-pays and all that kind of stuff…I mean, I get my alerts when I have an appointment, my reminders. User: The best thing about it, like I said, is keeping in touch with my physicians….my doctor or his nurse is pretty quick on answering these questions. It benefits me a lot, yes. | Some have used a portal in another system and it was pretty worthless. So, when I try to tell them — no, I’m telling you this is a very different much more advanced thing. I think the messaging volume is a lot no matter how they contact us. So, I think there's just a big burden of messages period. But doesn’t matter whether it comes in that way or phone and then I prefer portal versus phone. |
↵aUser indicates that the patient uses digital technology, defined as patient portal, chronic disease remote monitoring, and/or telemedicine.
COVID, coronavirus disease 2019.