They empower us, and baffle and scare us, too. Could they deliver test results in a more useful way?

Over the past decade, the electronic inbox has become a defining feature of modern clinical practice. Patient portal messaging—direct communication between patients and clinicians via a portal in the…

This cross-sectional study examines trends in US patient portal messaging, telehealth and telephone encounters, and office visits, assessing differences in messaging by various patient…

Background: Since the #covid19 pandemic, telehealth has become a core component of modern health care, encompassing both synchronous services (real-time video or phone) and patient portals, which offer a wide range of online features to streamline care delivery, including asynchronous communication and access to medical records. Older adults often face greater barriers to these technologies, potentially widening health care access gaps. Objective: This study examines factors influencing the adoption of patient portals and synchronous telehealth in the postpandemic era. It compares the 2 modalities and identifies distinct usage patterns across age groups to inform targeted strategies. Methods: We analyzed data from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) Cycles 6 and 7. Outcomes over the past 12 months included (1) frequency of patient portal use (continuous), (2) use of synchronous telehealth (binary), and (3) no engagement with any telehealth services (binary). Key variables included demographics, socioeconomic status, technology familiarity, and health care behaviors. Age groups were categorized as young (18–49 years), middle-aged (50–64 years), and older adults (≥65 years). Interaction terms between age groups and other variables were included to uncover age-specific patterns. To mitigate multicollinearity arising from the interaction terms, we used penalized linear and logistic regression models using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) penalty without survey weights, supplemented by bootstrapping to evaluate the stability. Using the selected variables, we then fitted survey-weighted generalized linear models to account for the complex design of the HINTS survey and more accurately represent the US population. Results: Among 12,865 respondents, 36.1% (n=4638) were 65 years or older. Overall, 65.2% used patient portals and 38.4% used synchronous telehealth. Age alone was not a significant factor, but older adults exhibited distinct patterns. Older adults with higher care frequency were less likely to use patient portals (coefficient −0.07, 95% CI −0.10 to −0.04;