The general answer...the ACA required patient access to their EHR without having to wait until a consult with their doctor.

Implementation of course as one might expect with a variety of health organization and contractors developing systems has been pretty good, well, ok, not bad, pretty awful...

For me, the hospitals I see or have been seen at, Mayo, Advent Health, Saint Luke's, Menorah, KU, Advent Health...have chosen to use My Chart.

This has enabled me to connect those organizations and grant access to my medical team to see all my test results, visit summaries....

As others have said, they prefer to wait to see their medical to know and discuss the results.

Me, inquiring minds want to know...

I review the results, do my homework and a week or so before my scheduled consult send a message through the portal to my medical team saying these are the top three things I would like to discuss during our short time available, usually 15 minutes or so...

My medical team seems to like that as we don't waste time though we can and do let the conversation flow. After all, my medical team is educated, trained, licensed, verified and have a lot of experience.

But hey, at least it's a starting point for the consult.

As others have said, the actual images from tests are generally not there but heck, I couldn't begin to read those!

Kevin