Policy shift at Beth Israel Deaconess
At the end of every workday, psychiatrists, social workers, and other mental health providers write notes describing their patients’ visits. It is where they chronicle paranoid behavior, excessive drinking, or relationship problems. These candid comments often are available to other doctors, but they are rarely shared with patients themselves.
Now, as part of an ongoing effort to make care more transparent, clinicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have begun posting the mental health notes in patients’ electronic medical records, allowing the patients immediate access to the summaries at home.
On March 1, about 40 providers started sharing their notes with more than 650 patients. Some are eagerly reading every word, clinicians said, while others have no interest.
“We all had some reservations,’’ said Dr. Michael Kahn, a psychiatrist who has worked at Beth Israel Deaconess for 20 years. “What about if a patient misinterpreted a note? Would they be upset about it? Would it confuse them?’’
But ultimately, he and his colleagues decided that sharing the notes could improve care by encouraging patients to more actively participate in their treatment, while inspiring providers to describe patients nonjudgmentally.
Patients can correct mistakes, such as a wrong medication dose. And rather than write a word such as “paranoid,’’ which to many people “means crazy or bad,’’ Kahn said he now uses less-loaded terms such as “persecutory anxiety.’’
Primary care providers at the Boston hospital, along with those at a handful of medical centers and physicians groups nationally, have been posting notes from medical visits in patients’ secure online medical records for several years — with mostly positive results.
Read the complete article on the Boston Globe’s website.
