Epic and MyChart Make More Appointments

Patient Portal Use Associated with 21 Million Fewer Visit No-Shows in 2024

Research by Epic Research. Patients who use MyChart are making it to their appointments more often than those who don’t. Slowly but surely patients are becoming more and more accustomed to check-in in every possible way.

Typical 2025 patient kiosk — Olea Kiosks

A new study from Epic Research found that patient portal use was associated with 21 million fewer no-show appointments in 2024. Patients who used MyChart were more likely to attend scheduled visits across specialties, age groups, and appointment types.

Fewer no-shows mean more timely care, better outcomes, and greater efficiency for health systems.

Key Findings

Patients with an active patient portal account at the time of scheduling their appointment were 21.5% less likely to no-show than those without an account, with a no-show rate of 6.2% for those with a patient portal account compared to 7.9% for those without.
The greatest difference was seen among patients aged 50–64, with users having a 6.2% no-show rate compared to 8.7% of non-users.

Missed outpatient appointments, or no-shows, disrupt care continuity, reduce clinic efficiency, and impact availability for other patients. Digital tools, such as patient portals, might improve appointment adherence by enhancing communication and engagement.¹ MyChart, Epic’s patient portal, allows patients to schedule and manage appointments, receive reminders, and access care-related information and is the patient portal assessed for this study.We studied more than 1.6 billion face-to-face outpatient visits in 2024, comparing no-show rates for patients with and without an established patient portal account at the time the appointment was scheduled.Overall, patients with an active patient portal had a no-show rate of 6.2%, compared to 7.9% for those without, as seen in Figure 1. Patients aged 50–64 saw the greatest percentage point difference (6.2% vs. 8.7%) followed by those aged 35–49 (7.8% vs. 9.9%). Younger patients had smaller gaps, with the smallest difference seen among 18–34-year-olds (9.3% vs. 10.9%).

Figure 1

Converting this finding to a rate, approximately 1,700 fewer no-shows occurred for patients with portal accounts per every 100,000 scheduled visits. This equates to more than 21 million fewer no-shows in one year across the 1.26 billion scheduled visits among patient-portal users in 2024.A sensitivity analysis accounting for other factors such as patient demographics, social vulnerability, appointment lead time, rate of no-shows in 2023, social drivers of health, insurance type, and number of recent visits showed similar patterns.

These data come from summarized metrics of organizations that use the Epic EHR to provide direct patient care. This study was completed by two teams that worked independently, each composed of a clinician and research scientists. The two teams came to similar conclusions. Graphics by Brian Olson.

References

Carini E, Villani L, Pezzullo AM, et al. The Impact of Digital Patient Portals on Health Outcomes, System Efficiency, and Patient Attitudes: Updated Systematic Literature Review. J Med Internet Res. 2021;23(9):e26189. Published 2021 Sep 8. doi:10.2196/26189

Data Definitions

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