My Health Patient Portal (2024)

FAQs

Can other doctors see your messages in MyChart? ›

Multiple members of your care team may view MyChart messages in order to get an appropriate and efficient response; this may include nurses or advance practice clinicians other than your primary care provider (PCP).

Some potential disadvantages of patient portals include:

Disparities in age, technological literacy, and internet access can make use of patient portals intimidating or unattractive to some patients.

Patient portals can help you access medical records, set up appointments, communicate with your health care professional, and pay medical bills. Some portals are created exclusively for a hospital or clinic, but there are companies that offer solutions that multiple health care systems can use.

Some test results are not released to your MyChart account because of their sensitive nature. Your doctor determines which types of test results are able to be accessed through MyChart and which might require an in person conversation.

Use MyChart Message Center to have conversations with your doctor or other clinic staff, ask non-emergency medical questions, send test results to your provider from another provider or network, and even upload your official COVID-19 vaccination record.

Messaging your doctor can be a convenient way to get medical advice. You can send a note through MyChart whenever you have time – day or night – and your provider will typically reply in one to three business days.

Some patients avoid portals because they fear losing the human touch in their healthcare. They value face-to-face conversations with their doctors and worry that going digital might take that away. Then there's the worry about privacy.

The most common barriers to patient portal adoption are preference for in-person communication, not having a need for the patient portal, and feeling uncomfortable with computers, which are barriers that are modifiable and can be intervened upon.

Some physicians, like Joel Katz, a Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine and director of the internal medicine residency program at Brigham and Women's, reply when they receive a thank you note. "When I get a thank-you note, I appreciate it. And I try to respond to it," Katz said.

Who controls the patient portal? ›

With a patient portal, your healthcare provider owns the information and they maintain it. They make the necessary updates based on your visits, results, and queries. In contrast, with a PHR, you are the owner. As we've said, this gives you greater control over your health information.

A patient portal is a secure online website that gives patients convenient, 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an Internet connection. Using a secure username and password, patients can view health information such as: Recent doctor visits. Discharge summaries.

If your blood counts fall outside of the normal range, which is shown in the “Reference interval” column, their values will be reported in the “Flag” column with an 'L' for low and an 'H' for high. The example CBC below shows that white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets are all low. CBC WITH DIFFERENTIAL.

All lab results are compared to a standard guideline for what is considered “within normal range.” These standards were developed as a guide but are not absolute. You will see an exclamation point (!) next to the result if it's outside of the normal range, but that isn't necessarily a cause for concern.

Flag A denotes adjusted lab test results.

Doctors can share patient information with other doctors provided the disclosure complies with the Privacy Rule – and a BAA is entered into when required – and provided the patient information is not restricted by the patient or subject to HIPAA's authorization requirements.

The statutorily created privilege between the physician and the patient ensures that the patient can fully disclose confidential information regarding one's illness without the fear of compromising one's privacy.

Physicians have an ethical obligation to preserve the confidentiality of information gathered in association with the care of the patient. With rare exceptions, patients are entitled to decide whether and to whom their personal health information is disclosed.

If you refresh or leave the page after deleting the message you will still have the option to restore it. However, if you logout of your account you will no longer be able to restore the messages – the messages are permanently deleted.