Providing patients with unfettered access to their health information is a pivotal step toward redesigning health care systems to better meet patients’ needs.
[1] However, access to radiology results has been tightly controlled. Reports function as proprietary communication between radiologists and referring
physicians who then communicate results to patients. [2] Patients experience the waiting for radiology results as stressful, frustrating, and an unnecessary
delay in receiving care.[3] Radiologists and referring physicians recognize patients’ dissatisfaction with the process and may be dissatisfied themselves because of the potential for results to “fall through the cracks.”