By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Nov. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Patients who can access their medical records and test results online tend to use more medical services and visit their doctor more often than before, according to a surprising new study.

It was believed that viewing health records electronically and being able to email the doctor would result in fewer office visits and phone calls -- and ultimately cut health costs -- but that wasn't the case here.

"Our hypothesis going into the study was exactly that," said lead researcher Dr. Ted Palen, a clinician researcher at Kaiser Permanente Colorado Institute for Health Research in Denver.

It's possible that the increase in medical services wasn't the result of online access, Palen said. "This was an association we found, it wasn't necessarily a cause and effect. We need to understand more about this association."

Ultimately, he speculated, online access will produce better health care and better results for patients.

For the study, published in the Nov. 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Palen's team collected data on Kaiser Permanente members in Colorado enrolled from 2005 to 2010.

Researchers tracked office visits, telephone calls, after-hours clinic visits, emergency department visits and hospitalizations for roughly 44,000 adults with online access to their medical records and 44,000 patients without access.

They found online users had 16 percent more office visits and 8 percent more telephone calls in the year after they gained online access, compared to their rate beforehand.

Patients without online access had 8 percent fewer clinic visits and no change in telephone calls.

Originally posted here:

'E-Medicine' May Not Be Cost Saver After All, Study Says