Access to Radiology Reports via an Online Patient Portal: Experiences of Referring Physicians and Patients.

Purpose: Few organizations have reported providing radiology reports to patients via an electronic health record patient portal. The authors describe the process of manual release of reports made by referring physicians, and patients' and referring physicians' experiences during the first year that release through the portal was available.

Methods: A survey of 508 patients assessed perceived accessibility and importance of portal-released radiology reports, and communications with referring physicians before and after the release.

The Kaiser Permanente Electronic Health Record: transforming and streamlining modalities of care.

We examined the impact of implementing a comprehensive electronic health record (EHR) system on ambulatory care use in an integrated health care delivery system with more than 225,000 members. Between 2004 and 2007, the annual age/sex-adjusted total office visit rate decreased 26.2 percent, the adjusted primary care office visit rate decreased 25.

Evidence-based guidelines.

The Advanced/Policy Track of the 2004 Kaiser Permanente Evidence-Based Medicine Symposium was an interactive session that focused on developing evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. The hypothetical scenario involved the imaginary drug "Memoryboost," a treatment for dementia. The participants were given materials describing the national Kaiser Permanente (KP) methodology for developing evidence-based guidelines and a summary of the highest-quality articles about the efficacy of this drug.