Blease C, Torous J, and Hägglund M, Opinion: Does patient access to clinical notes change documentation? November 2020. Frontiers in Public Health, 8, p.578
doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.577896
Open, honest, and trustworthy communication is crucial to ensure the effective responses of citizens. Paralleling transparency in the arena of public health are new practice policies that are set to transform the transmission of information at the level of doctors and patients. While patients have legally been entitled to obtain copies of their records for many years, in March 2020 federal legislation in the United States (U.S.) mandated that health providers offer all patients rapid and secure online access to their clinical notes via patient portals (“open notes”). Similar developments are underway in the United Kingdom (U.K.) where in April 2020 it was announced that patients in NHS England will be granted online access, albeit prospectively, to their full general practitioners’ notes. Worldwide, open notes have already been enacted in more than ten countries including Sweden, Estonia, and Norway.
A variety of surveys have been conducted into patients’ and doctors’ experiences of open notes but much less is understood about the objective changes in documentation that may arise as a result of patient access. We review current research into open notes including clinicians’ reports on how they have modified their notes as a result of implementing the practice. Highlighting the potentially beneficial and harmful effects that different types of documentation changes might have on the therapeutic relationship and on patient outcomes, we argue that more research is needed to investigate objective changes in notes as a result of patient access.
