Reporting radiology results to patients: keeping them calm versus keeping them under control

Abstract

In recent years, there has been evidence of increasing patient interest in easy, timely and complete access to all personal health information [1–4,101]. Breadth of interest has perhaps been increased by the recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) legislation which offers tangible incentives to providers who develop systems that offer patients access to electronic health records in order to maintain personal health records [5,102]. While the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 with ARRA outlines some specific required content for the patient-accessed medical records (e.g., allergies, medications and problem lists) in order for provider systems to qualify for financial incentives, inclusion of radiology reports has not been in early guidelines. However, there is evidence that patients specifically desire access to radiology results and so the question of how increased patient access to these test results might affect quality of care is raised [1,3,6–8].