U.S. News Health – If you’re like most patients in the U.S., you haven’t a clue what your doctor writes about you in your health record.
Despite a move toward more transparency in medicine, only about 3 percent of the U.S. population currently has ready access to notes written in their charts. And most physicians polled are still resistant to the idea. “Two-thirds of doctors still do not feel comfortable in giving access to the notes of their visit to the patients,” says Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and professor of genomics at The Scripps Research Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization based in La Jolla, California.
HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, gives patients the legal right to review their medical record. This includes doctor’s notes, though not notes kept separate from the medical record, as mental health observations sometimes are. But only a fraction of patients have access to their doctors’ notes online, like through medical organizations’ patient portals, which increasingly offer patients a way to access their lab test results or other information about their care online.
Read Michael Schroeder’s full article here.
