Frequency of and Factors Associated with Care Partner Proxy Interaction with Health Care Teams Using Patient Portal Accounts

Introduction:Proxies can communicate with health care teams through patient portals either by using proxy login credentials or a patient’s login credentials. The frequency of proxies using patient login credentials is unknown.

Methods:A random selection of 3,000 portal messages sent in through adult patients’ own portal account was reviewed for indicators (referring to the patient in the third person) that someone other than the patient was using the patient portal account.

Results:Of the reviewed 3,000 portal messages sent through patient portal accounts, 221 (7.4%) appeared to be sent in by a proxy, 2,512 (83.8%) appeared to have been sent in by the patient and for 266 (8.9%) portal messages reviewed it was unclear who sent in the message. There was no difference in mean age between patients who had proxy messages sent through patient portal accounts versus proxy portal accounts. Patients who had proxies send messages through patient accounts were more likely to be married and male. Out of 221 manually reviewed messages apparently sent by proxies through patient portal accounts there were 113 (51%) where the proxy included their name and 56 (25.3%) where they reported their relationship to the patient. During the study period, 0.7% of total messages on adult patients were sent through proxy accounts.

Discussion:Proxies appear to use patient portal accounts much more frequently than proxy accounts to communicate with the health care team on adult patients; however, when using patient accounts they only identify themselves approximately half of the time.