Study finds racial disparities in online patient portal responses

Have you ever sent your doctor a question through an online patient portal? The type of response you get may differ depending on your race, a recent study suggests.

For the study, published in JAMA Network Open Monday, researchers examined patient portal message responses from more than 39,000 patients at Boston Medical Center in 2021, including the rates at which medical advice requests were responded to and the types of health care professionals that responded.

"When patients who belong to minoritized racial and ethnic groups sent these messages, the likelihood of receiving any care team response was similar, but the types of health care professionals that responded differed," the authors wrote.