Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s biggest healthcare systems, turned in another big year of patients using its digital healthcare tools. But the growth wasn’t as fast as in prior years.

The Oakland, California-based health network is one of the few organizations that breaks out year-over year-growth in key digital and mobile health metrics. In 2018, the average daily number of Kaiser patients and website users who logged onto KP.org and via its mobile apps reached 850,000, an increase of 6.3% from 800,000 logins in 2017.

In contrast, the rate of increase in 2017 over 2016 was more than twice as big, at 18%, as the average daily number of Kaiser patients and website users who logged onto KP.org via desktop computer and mobile devices increased to 800,000 from 678,000.

In 2018 about 30 million prescriptions were filled online, an increase of 17.6% from 25.5 million prescriptions in in 2017. Kaiser patients also went online more to check their lab results last year but at about the same rate as the previous year. About 50 million lab results were viewed by patients in 2018, an increase of 2.7% from 48.7 million lab results in 2016.

In comparison in 2017, the number of digital prescriptions filled online grew 17% from 21.8 million prescriptions in 2016, while the views of online lab results grew year over year by 7.3%.

“While the healthcare industry experienced considerable changes in 2018, we continued making great progress on delivering high-quality, affordable and accessible care and coverage to more people,” says Kaiser chairman and CEO Bernard J. Tyson.

Kaiser has poured more than $400 million into digital healthcare and electronic health records technology in the past decade, the health system says.

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