Although clinician notes are now available to all patients, many of the most vulnerable populations are less likely to read them. This study tracks how ethnicity, race, and language impact who is opening their notes at a high-volume specialty cancer center.
Patient Portals
Near-wins in the pursuit of quality: does transparency matter if no one is looking?
In this new editorial for BMJ Quality & Safety, Sigall Bell, MD and Cait DesRoches, DrPH reflect on how access to medical notes can improve the quality of care, but only if patients are able to read and understand them. In the time between medical visits, when patients are monitoring their own health, AI may open a new frontier.
Changes in Documentation After Implementing Open Notes in Mental Health Care: Pre-Post Mixed Methods Study
https://doi.org/10.2196/72667 Background The practice of providing patients with digital access to clinical narrative documentation by health care professionals (HCPs) is known as open notes. In mental health care, this innovation has the potential to increase transparency and foster greater trust in the treatment process. While open notes may improve the quality of care and patient…
Chaplains’ Charting in the USA in the Era of “Open Notes:” Recommendations from a Quality Improvement Project
This paper addressed the particular needs of chaplains in oncology settings where relationships tend to be longer. It recommends using strengths-based language, avoiding language that suggests disbelief, shortening notes, and using documentation to extend spiritual care.
AI-supported Digital OpenNotes in Primary Care Setting
AI could be a solution to many challenges in primary care such as time constraints and difficulties in patient understanding. However, there are risks of inappropriate or inconsistent responses. A new German research alliance is studying this emerging field.
Issue Brief: Shared Access to the Patient Portal
This issue brief summarizes the activities and learnings of the Coalition for Care Partners around shared access. Research has spanned from 2019 to 2025, including the formation of the Shared Access Learning Collaborative. The Coalition offers recommendations for policymakers, clinical leadership, patients, and care partners.
People Overtrust AI-Generated Medical Advice despite Low Accuracy
This article presents an analysis of how artificial intelligence (AI)–generated medical responses are perceived and evaluated by nonexperts. The increased trust placed in inappropriate AI-generated medical advice can lead to misdiagnosis.
Hospitalized patient portal access in the post-information blocking rule era
This single-center, cross-sectional observational study highlights low patient portal utilization among hospitalized patients and disparities in access based on race/ethnicity, gender, age, and insurance status.
Users’ perspectives on a demonstration to increase shared access to older adults’ patient portals
As shared access uptake remains low, the Coalition for Care Partners, and three healthcare delivery organizations, co-designed an initiative promoting shared access to the patient portals of older adults.
A Proof-of-Concept Study for Patient Use of Open Notes with Large Language Models
Can AI chatbots help patients make sense of their medical notes? This first-of-its-kind study published in JAMIA Open finds that with the right prompt, large language models may become powerful partners in understanding complex health information.
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