As the OpenNotes movement continues to grow, a broad variety of journalists, patients and health care professionals are taking note. Even better, they’re sharing the facts, data, opinions and experiences of those sharing medical notes. See what the buzz is all about.
A doctor who sees a child with an odd appearance might write “FLK” in his notes. Short for “funny-looking kid”, it is meant not as an insult, but as a reminder to watch for slow growth and mental retardation, which can accompany physical abnormalities. Later he may add “FLD”: funny-looking dads tend to have funnylooking…
There is a growing group of articulate and engaged patients committed to getting access to all their medical information in order to be better positioned to work collaboratively with their clinical teams. Published studies like the OpenNotes project have consistently shown significant benefits and a lack of serious problems. Health care systems are slow to…
If you’ve ever met with a therapist, you may have wondered what he or she is writing down while you’re speaking. Maybe you’ve even tried to sneak a peek and decipher upside-down handwriting. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is removing that guesswork for some patients. A new pilot program lets carefully selected psychiatric patients read…
by Eileen Hughes I was 20 years old when a new doctor I had just started seeing for my recent diagnosis of type 1 diabetes told me that his job was to help me learn more about diabetes, but ultimately it was my disease to manage. It was my choice to take insulin, to watch…
If you’ve ever visited a therapist, you’ve likely experienced this very moment: You spill your heart out, anxiously await a response, and your doc looks down—scribbling into a notebook or tapping away at an iPad. You’re stuck: “What is he writing?!” About 700 patients at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital—part of a preliminary study at…
At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, therapists are giving mental health patients access to therapy notes and charts, something patients commonly have access to in other fields. The doctors behind the project say that opening mental health records up to patients allows for a more participatory, active, and collaborative therapy practice. Critics argue…
David Baldwin wasn’t sure how he had come across the other day in group therapy at the hospital, near the co-op apartment where he lives with his rescue cat, Zoey. He struggles with bipolar disorder, severe anxiety and depression. Like so many patients, he secretly wondered what his therapist thought of him. But unlike those…
Health-care providers are giving patients more access to their medical records so they can help spot and correct errors and omissions. Studies show errors can occur on as many as 95% of the medication lists found in patient medical records. Errors include outdated data and omissions that many patients could readily identify, including prescription drugs…
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