Psychiatry and social work clinicians report positive results from the mental health pilot at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an attempt to measure the use of OpenNotes to share mental health notations with patients.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston – an academic medical center affiliated with Harvard Medical School – employs approximately 2,400 clinical staff, including 800 physicians and 1,200 registered nurses. BIDMC has 649 inpatient beds, and offers both hospital- and community-based ambulatory care. BIDMC developed its EMR beginning in the 1980s and opened its patient portal, PatientSite, in 1999. Approximately 75,000 patients have PatientSite accounts.
BIDMC’s first initiation of OpenNotes came in 2010, when it opened notes to patients of 39 volunteering primary care physicians. On review of that study’s results, the hospital’s Clinical Operations Executive Committee voted to open all clinicians’ notes.
Read Christine Kern’s full article on the HealthIT Outcome website!!
