Before the doctor sees it: Test results in the era of instant access
This comic is co-published under a Creative Commons license by the Boston Globe Magazine and The Journalist’s Resource, a project of Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which commissioned the work.
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Editor’s note:
In “Before the doctor sees it: Test results in the era of instant access,” Josh Neufeld uses comics journalism to highlight certain provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act. The comic draws on the findings of several academic research articles, along with additional sources — including interviews with researchers Bryan Steitz, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University, and Liz Salmi, the communications and patient initiatives director at OpenNotes.
Steitz and Salmi are characters in the nonfiction comic, which discusses the implications of a rule that lets patients receive their medical test results as soon as they’re ready — often before their physicians have a chance to review them.
This piece adds to the growing field of graphic medicine, which uses comics as a tool to tell true stories about health care experiences, as well as to distill and discuss complex medical topics.
Neufeld is the creator of several health care related comics, including “Vaccinated at the Ball: A True Story about Trusted Messengers,” which won the 2023 GMIC Award for Excellence in Graphic Medicine, Short Form, from the Graphic Medicine International Collective.
Source list
“Patient online record access in English primary care: Qualitative survey study of general practitioners’ views.” Charlotte Blease et al. Journal of Medical Internet Research, February 2023.
“As a journalist my partner fought for the facts. Yet the truth of his own medical condition was kept from him.” Charlotte Blease. The Guardian, April 2023.
“Leveraging large language models for generating responses to patient messages — a subjective analysis.” Siru Liu et al. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, March 2024.
“Knowing what the doctor knows.” Alvin Powell. Harvard Gazette, November 2022.
“Association of immediate release of test results to patients with implications for clinical workflow.” Bryan D. Steitz et al. JAMA Network Open, October 2021.
“Perspectives of patients about immediate access to test results through an online patient portal.” Bryan D. Steitz et al. JAMA Network Open, March 2023.
“The 21st Century Cures Act requires that patients receive medical results immediately — and new research shows patients prefer it that way.” Bryan D. Steitz and C. T. Lin. The Conversation, July 2023.
“Impact of notification policy on patient-before-clinician review of immediately released test results.” Bryan D. Steitz et al. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, July 2023.
“Repeated access to patient portal while awaiting test results and patient-initiated messaging.” Bryan D. Steitz, Robert W. Turer and Liz Salmi. JAMA Network Open, April 2025.
“HHS announces crackdown on health data blocking.” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Press release, September 2025.
