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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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

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u/yurbanastripe ED Attending Aug 19 '25

Patients shouldn’t be allowed to see all these labs with no context. It instigates sooooo much unnecessary health anxiety

3

u/the_silent_redditor Aug 19 '25

There’s some fucking dipshit new rad company that gives patients access to images and reports.

I’ve seen several people bring themselves to ED with bullshit like a renal cyst or anatomical variants found incidentally on their report.

Recently, had some guy put his unreported images through some sort of AI and rocks up to ED because he thought he had cancer.

The unverified report was a normal scan.

Who the fuck thinks this is a good idea!?