Table 1.

Theme 1—Facilitators of disease management.

Subtheme	Patient quotes	Provider quotes
Patient awareness	“It helped me understand that, so it made me watch my sugar more often when I was in pain. I would check my sugar to find out if it was high or low and try to tie in the highness of the sugar with the pain I was in or you know, stuff like that and with the eyesight as well it took a lot of, like, what I was really worried about was the eyesight when I found I was diabetic and it helped me with that quite a bit...”	“The more that pts [patients] understand their issues the more they are motivated to be responsible…”
		“Occasionally a patient used the portal to report symptoms that should have triggered an office visit. Also, I am concerned they would use this instead of having their regular formal lab evaluation and follow-up visit” a
		“They are probably the patients that would bring accurate records to their [appointments] anyway.”
Access to Information	“I found it easy to use and with using the health portal, using that section I found it much easier and faster because it gave me the topics that were relevant to what I was looking for and not a list of suggestions, that might be relevant as well, it just gave me what was relevant to what I was looking for…”	“[The most useful feature was] the Health Library”…
		“Sharing care could be useful, but it did not seem like mydoctor.ca was utilized as anticipated due to the time it took to use…cumbersome, lots of unnecessary/irrelevant information, little added value…” a
Self-efficacy and behavior change	“I also found it kind of, you know, embarrassing because I would look on it and say, okay, I haven’t put a blood record in in 52 days and I haven’t really checked my blood, I guess I'd better do that, you know. Like, it gave me the kick in the butt, on the butt to...oh, gee, I better start putting logs again and that.”	“Allowing patients to receive their lab results/data without having to phone in or come in for an appointment. This allows them to receive their health information faster, which may help them be more proactive in their health care.”
		“Patient self management [is the most useful feature], but having someone look over their results for intervention if needed. Best used for new diabetics to help them see patterns, educating as they become used to dealing with their disease.”

^a Italicized quotes denote contrasting opinions.