National poll finds online patient portals for children are underused

University of Michigan illustration

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

A national survey found that only 43% of parents have set up an online patient portal for their child and 41% said they had not been educated on when to use it.

"Given all the conveniences portals offer, it's surprising that over half of parents have not set one up for their child, most commonly because they don't see a need for it," Sarah J. Clark, co-director of the polling team, told HealthDay. "This report suggests many parents may not be aware of all the potential benefits of using a patient portal for children."

Patient portals are computer applications to facilitate communication between patients, parents and health-care providers.

The poll was taken by the C. S. Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan. It was administered in February to a randomly selected, stratified group of 2,000 adults who were parents of at least one child living in their household. The poll's overall margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage points, and up to 6 poimts for its subsamples.

The poll found that 59% of parents said their child's health-care provider gave them instructions or guidance on when to use the portal. Of that group, three-fourths said they felt "very satisfied" with their ability to communicate with their child's provider, compared to just over half of those who said they received no instruction. 

Of those who did not have a portal, 31% said they did not need one, 25% said they did not know it needed to be set up, 21% said it was not an option with their provider, 16% said they prefer other ways to communicate, 6% had privacy concerns and 3% had technical problems in getting it set up. 

Of those who had a portal, the top three uses were for scheduling appointments (57%), completing pre-visit forms (68%) and looking at their child's test results (65%). Other uses included telehealth visits, requesting records and forms for school, sports or camp, getting a prescription refilled and referrals. And, 34% of the parents used the portal to get advice about their child's illness, injury or symptoms.

One concern among parents reported in the poll was losing access to their child's health information as they age, with 74% of them wishing they had access to their child's health records until they turned 18. 

The poll found that 31% of parents of teens saw changes in their patient portal access, including the information and messages from their child that they could see.