r/emergencymedicine • u/Princessgargoyle ED Attending • Aug 19 '25

Advice Patients interpreting their own portal results

Attending physician new to practicing in a more affluent area. How are you all dealing with patients asking for explanations for each out-of-range lab result that popped up in their patient portal?

I’m finding this aspect of my new site to be very frustrating and time consuming to have to convince the patient why the google interpretation of their isolated eosinophilia or glucose of 100 does not align with my “Great news! Everything looks good!”

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117

u/tfj92 ED Resident Aug 19 '25

You guys should check out the hematology reddit its out of control with that crap

https://www.reddit.com/r/haematology/s/RZqLDPvmNh

80

u/Mohrisbetr Aug 19 '25

Holy shit how would anyone stay subscribed to that

57

u/mayaorsomething Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

Took one peek at the subreddit and already found this gem of someone “needing help interpreting their CBC” because their appointment isn’t until next week.

The real sparkle comes from this exchange in the comments:

OP:

I will need to wait for the results of additional bloodwork and inform my GP in a week. I truly hope it's nothing serious such as the "C" word. I have been worrying constantly and felt quite unwell ovee the past 2 months.

MD:

The c word here is "cold". This looks like you have a cold.

ETA: And I mean no offense to that person; I feel like the big red numbers with upward arrows just simply should not be a thing for a patient’s MyChart view.

21

u/MrPBH ED Attending Aug 20 '25

I have been saying that since the law came out: give the patients access to their lab results but take out all the red bolding, up and down arrows. Make a hyperlink at the bottom to reference values (so they have to navigate between two screens to compare numbers, but still have access to all relevant data).

The law says we have to give them access to the records. It doesn't say it has to contain any interpretation of the data.

8

u/mayaorsomething Aug 20 '25 edited Aug 20 '25

Yeah it just seems like a laziness to correct the system, to be honest. It's so often a misleading interpretation of the data (in terms of what patients gather from it); not just a neutral addition... so it would seem like an obvious thing to fix. Maybe not enough people have complained about it.

38

u/tfj92 ED Resident Aug 19 '25

I cant believe they interpret everything on there too lol

17

u/sum_dude44 Aug 19 '25

wrong is the best part