Disparities in Electronic Health Record Patient Portal Enrollment Among Oncology Patients

Disparities in Electronic Health Record Patient Portal Enrollment Among Oncology PatientsCare for oncology patients requires multidisciplinary, longitudinal coordination.Patient portals allow patients to access medical information from electronic health records (EHRs) and communicate with clinicians.This can improve treatment coordination and increase active participation in care. 1 Unfortunately, disparities in patient portal use across age, race/ ethnicity, and socioeconomic status can affect quality of care, especially in oncology.1,2 To identify longitudinal disparities in access, we analyzed right-censored patient portal enrollment over an 8-year period.Methods | We conducted a retrospective EHR-based study of a single cancer center since its adoption of an electronic patient portal, including all encounters for all patients 18 years or older to limit data acquisition bias.The study was approved by the University of California, San Francisco institutional review board, and consent was waived for secondary research of a large number of patients, for whom risk of contact would pose a greater risk than the study.Self-reported demographic characteristics, encounters data, and portal use were extracted from the EHR.Enrollment in the patient portal over the study period was assessed using the Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test.Characteristics associated with enrollment were assessed with the Cox proportional hazards method.The analysis was conducted in R, version Table.Patient Characteristics and Univariate and Multivariate Association With Patient Portal Enrollment