Article

Effective patient–provider communication is key to ensuring high-quality and safe patient care. Secure Internet-based communication portals (portals) are being used increasingly by health care systems and providers to enhance asynchronous communications with patients outside of face-to-face interactions.1-7 Because of its asynchronous nature, portal-based communication can play an important role in improving patient care quality and safety because it allows for 2-way communication and access to potentially important information outside of office visits or hospitalizations. Examples include more timely communication between patient and pro-vider regarding rapidly deteriorating conditions such as heart failure; more timely medication adjustments, espe-cially for newly prescribed drugs; quicker follow-up post-discharge communications and interventions; previsit communication of questions and concerns; and the poten-tial for e-visits to substitute for office visits. Although portals are intuitively appealing to enhance communication between patients and their providers, little is known about differences in patients ’ preferences when they are asked to think about the relative importance of different functions of a “hypothetical ” portal compared with preferences of patients who actually enroll for and use a portal. Understanding these differences is important to identify which patient groups may be more likely to take advantage of the asynchronous communication potential of patient portals as a tool to improve patien