Patient Preferences for and Satisfaction with Methods of Communicating Test Results in a Primary Care Practice

The results describe primary care patients' preferences for communication from their providers. Disparities exist between current practice and patient preferences in this important care delivery process. A telephone call from a physician or nurse practitioner was used to deliver test results for fewer than half of the patients who preferred to receive their results by this method. Future work should explore reimbursement of patient-preferred options and assess ways to improve resource-conscious test result communication methods.