Why Healthcare Must Help Patients Make Sense Of Their Health Information
Healthcare has spent years making information more accessible. Patients can now view test results online, access medical records through patient portals, compare providers, estimate procedure costs and. . .
Healthcare has spent years making information more accessible. Patients can now view test results online, access medical records through patient portals, compare providers, estimate procedure costs and message their care teams without picking up the phone. On paper, that should make navigating healthcare easier. Yet for many Americans, the experience still feels harder than it should. Thelatest federal datashow that 77% of Americans were offered online access to their health information in 2024, while 59% had multiple online medical records or patient portals. Only 7% reported using an app to combine information from different portals into one place. Alongside that, a 2025 analysis of nationallyrepresentative U. S. patient datafound that as patient portals and other digital health tools become more common, patients are expected to interpret their own health information independently. That expectation carries a real burden. U. S. adults now spend the equivalent of anentire workday each monthcoordinating healthcare for themselves or a loved one, and a majority describe the process as overwhelming and time-consuming. That’s the gap healthcare now needs to close. Access has improved – understanding has not. The cost of leaving that gap open is high. When patients can’t make sense of what they’re seeing, they delay care, put off decisions and set aside bills they don’t understand, meaning outcomes that hurt patients first also land squarely on providers, payers and employers too. Transparency is not the same as understandingIndeed, giving a patient access to an explanation of benefits is useful, but many people still don’t know whether that document is a bill. Showing a deductible online is one thing, but it doesn’t always tell someone what they will actually pay for a specific appointment, prescription or procedure. Sending test results through a portal may be faster, but speed alone does not explain what those results mean or what should happen next. This is where healthcare differs from other consumer experiences. In most industries, digital tools are designed to reduce the amount of work a person has to do. In healthcare, digital access can oftentimes shift more responsibility onto the patient – and that responsibility is not small. Patients are being asked to interpret clinical language, insurance terminology, billing timelines, eligibility requirements and care instructions, often at moments when they are already stressed or unwell. Patients experience the system as one journeyHealthcare organizations tend to manage information through separate workflows. Patients experience those workflows as one continuous journey. A person trying to book care may need to understand whether a provider is in-network, whether a referral is required, what the visit may cost and what paperwork needs to be completed beforehand. After the appointment, they may receive an explanation of benefits before the actual bill. If more than one provider was involved, separate bills may arrive at different times. None of this is unusual inside healthcare. To a patient, it can feel like a sign that something has gone wrong. Medical billing is a good example. Bills often take weeks or months to arrive because claims move through coding, insurer review, provider reconciliation and patient billing before a final statement is issued. The same issue appears in scheduling. Online booking can reduce phone calls and improve convenience, but patients still need to understand provider availability and know when a request requires staff review rather than direct booking. Each individual tool may be working as designed, but the patient still has to connect the pieces. That’s why the healthcare experience cannot be measured only by whether information is available, but by whether patients can use that information to make a decision with confidence. For healthcare leaders, that distinction matters commercially as well as clinically. Confusion shows up as call center volume, no-shows, delayed payments and downstream rework – and it shows up in the measures that matter most, from patient satisfaction scores to loyalty and long-term trust. Confidence comes from contextMost patients are trying to answer immediate, practical questions. What does my insurance actually cover? What will this cost me? What do I need to do before my appointment? What happens next?The answers to those questions sit across systems that were not built around the patient’s point of view. Context changes that experience. It helps someone understand whether a document requires action. It explains why a bill hasn’t arrived yet. It tells a patient what step comes next and where they may need help. Recent research in oncology shows why this is so important. An open study found that75% of surveyed cancer patientspreferred to receive a diagnosis directly from a clinician, either in person or by telemedicine, rather than through a patient portal notification. That finding doesn’t necessarily mean portals are the problem, but it does prove that information delivery depends on timing, sensitivity and explanation. So what does closing the understanding gap actually look like? It starts with designing around the patient’s journey rather than the organization’s workflows. That means pairing every document, result and balance with a plain-language explanation of what it is and what happens next. It means surfacing cost, coverage and eligibility information at the moment a decision is being made, rather than leaving patients to assemble it from separate systems. And it means measuring success differently, not by whether information was delivered, but by whether the patient knew what to do after seeing it. This is an opportunity for healthcare leaders to rethink what patient-centered digital experience really means. The goal should not be to add another dashboard, portal or notification unless it helps reduce uncertainty. Healthcare will always involve complexity. Patients understand that. What they shouldn’t have to accept is being left to interpret that complexity alone. The organizations that get this right will earn something increasingly rare in healthcare: patients who trust them enough to act. That trust translates into earlier care, cleaner data, fewer avoidable calls, and stronger long-term relationships. The next era of patient experience won’t be won by the organizations that share the most information. It will be won by the ones that finally help patients make sense of it.