r/emergencymedicine • u/Princessgargoyle ED Attending • 13d ago

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 13d ago

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

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

44

u/yurbanastripe ED Attending 13d ago

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

31

u/nursingintheshadows 13d ago

I wish the results were posted like 24 hours later or released after discharge. That way, the PCM can answer. Who am I kidding, they’ll check in the next day for abnormal lab results while live on a social platform saying we’re killing them and dismissing their symptoms because of hair color and pajama pants.

10

u/sum_dude44 13d ago

Images are 10x worse (5mm hyperdensity in liver...

4

u/the_silent_redditor 12d ago

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!?