People with diabetes who read their clinicians’ visit notes: Behaviors and attitudes

Abstract

Objectives To understand behaviors and attitudes of adults with diabetes who read their clinicians’ visit notes. Methods By linking a large 2017 patient survey involving three institutions with administrative and portal use data, we identified patients with diabetes mellitus from outpatient records and examined reading behaviors related to eligible notes—initial, follow-up, history and physical, and progress notes. We analyzed patients’ perceived benefits of reading notes. Results 2104 respondents had diagnoses of diabetes mellitus and had read ≥1 note in the 12-month period. Patients had an average of 8.7 eligible notes available and read 59% of them. The strongest predictor of reading more notes was having more notes available; the specialties of the authoring clinicians were not correlated with note reading rates. Patients reported understanding notes by primary care clinicians and specialists equally well; more than 90% of patients reported understanding everything or almost everything in a self-selected note. Across visit types, 73–80% of patients reported that note reading was extremely important for taking care of their health. Discussion People with diabetes want to read their clinicians’ notes, are accessing them at high rates, and report understanding the notes and benefiting from reading them.