Table 2. Health care utilization of portal users and non-users between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2019.

	Total ( N  = 178,720)	Portal user ( N  = 57,122)	Portal non-user ( N  = 121,598)	p -Value
Primary care visits
Per patient per year	3.01	3.08	2.98	<0.001 a
Emergency room visits
Per patient per year	0.18	0.17	0.19	<0.001 a
Inpatient visits
Per patient per year	0.09	0.10	0.09	<0.001 a
Inpatient days
Per patient per year	0.45	0.44	0.45	<0.001 a
Patient no shows
Per patient per year	0.24	0.17	0.27	<0.001 a

Note: A patient was defined as a portal user if they used any one of four bidirectional portal functions during the study period: (1) sent an appointment request message; (2) sent a medication renewal request message; (3) sent a medical advice message; and (4) directly scheduled an appointment.

^a Wilcoxon rank sum p -value for per patient per year.