Care partners are a critical, though informal, part of the healthcare system but are often not well supported by formal structures. OurNotes for Care Partners aims to identify care partners, assess their needs, and offer practical resources to alleviate stress and offer support through the Caregiver Intensity Index.
care partners
Empowering informal caregivers with health information: OpenNotes as a safety strategy
Patients frequently depend on informal caregivers (e.g., family, friends, or paid workers) to assist with various aspects of medical care, such as medication administration and travel to medical appointments. OpenNotes seeks to share clinicians’ notes with patients through patient portals. Although patients frequently grant portal access to caregivers, the impact of this improved access to health information on the safety of care provided by caregivers remains unknown. Researchers sent a survey to 24,722 patients participating in OpenNotes who had at least one available visit note during the study period. The surveys were sent through the patient portal. Out of the 7058 surveys returned, 150 respondents self-identified as caregivers. Analysis of survey data revealed that access to patient notes enhanced caregiver understanding of recommended medical care including tests and referrals, reminded them about necessary testing, helped them understand results, reminded them about appointments, and improved caregiver ability to assist patients with medications. An Annual Perspective discussed the potential of health information technology to improve patient and caregiver engagement in safety.
Wall Street Journal: The Delicate Question of Sharing Medical Information With Adult Children
As baby boomers increasingly assist their elderly parents with health issues large and small, families are having to rethink
Sharing Access to Notes Engages and Empowers Patients, Families and other Care Partners
Jennifer L. Wolff, PhD. Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Navigating health system demands and managing treatments can be difficult, particularly for individuals with complex health needs who are often under the care of multiple providers.
HIT Leaders & News: Accessing medical information online via patient portals
Linda Johnson was 3,000 miles away from her Seattle home visiting her daughter in Baltimore when she had a medical emergency. Fortunately, Linda, like many of our patients at Harborview Medical Center, has secure online access to her complete medical record, and in this critical moment, she was able to share that access with her daughter.…
Patients, Care Partners, and Shared Access to the Patient Portal: Online Practices at an Integrated Health System
Shared access is an underused strategy that may bridge patients’ health literacy deficits and lack of technology experience and that helps but does not fully resolve concerns regarding patient and care partner identity credentials.
JMIR Publications: Patients Who Share Transparent Visit Notes With Others
ABSTRACT Background: Inviting patients to read their primary care visit notes may improve communication and help them engage more actively in their health care. Little is known about how patients will use the opportunity to share their visit notes with family members or caregivers, or what the benefits might be. Objective: Our goal was to…
Partnering with Caregivers
by Jon Darer, MD, MPH, Chief Innovation Officer for the Division of Clinical Innovation for Geisinger Health System Recently, I attended a family caregiver summit in Washington, DC, sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, Booz Allen Hamilton, America’s Health Insurance Plans, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Intel-GE Care Innovations and UnitedHealthcare. The summit focused on an issue many of us…
OpenNotes: Hospitalists’ challenge and opportunity
Dr. Henry Feldman and co-authors explore the implications of giving patients on the hospital wards real time access to notes. This article discusses opportunities to use shared visit notes to partner with patients and their caregivers, at the bedside and after discharge. An early view of, “OpenNotes: Hospitalists’ Challenge and Opportunity,” published in the Journal…
