Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center received a $450,000 grant from The Commonwealth Fund this week to develop a program called OurNotes that allows patients to contribute to their medical records. The program is an extension of the well-known OpenNotes initiative and will include collaboration with a handful of other providers across the country. “This is really…
Healthcare Transparency
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…
Forbes: How To Get Doctors To Email Their Patients
Remember memos? As late as the 1990s, businesspeople would type, print and copy a formal memorandum onto a sheet of pre-printed letterhead to be delivered the next day. But those days before email are ancient history, right? Perhaps not, if you work in healthcare. Despite fueling nearly 18% of our nation’s advanced economy, the healthcare…
Modern Healthcare: Geisinger using technology to increase patient engagement, CEO says
Geisinger Health System has invested in health information technology innovations to transform itself from a fragmented, hospital-centric model to one that actively courts patient involvement and access, CEO Dr. Glenn Steele, Jr. said during an industry talk Thursday. The Danville, Pa.-based system has invested in three key areas: virtual visits; patient access to healthcare data;…
Let’s Show Patients Their Mental Health Records
Should we health professionals encourage patients with mental illness to read their medical record notes? As electronic medical records and secure online portals proliferate, patients are gaining ready access not only to laboratory findings but also to clinicians’ notes. Primary care patients report that reading their doctors’ notes brings many benefits including greater control over their health care, and their doctors experience surprisingly few changes in workflow. While patients worry about electronic records and potential loss of privacy, they vote resoundingly for making their records more available to them and often to their families.
Huffington Post: Medical Notes for All to See
Cleveland Clinic patients can now see the notes written about them after an office visit. Later this year, they will also be able to view selected hospital notes. This comes on top of the laboratory results, radiology and pathology reports, and problem and medication lists they can already access via a secure online medical record…
The Road toward Fully Transparent Medical Records
Patients who were given access to their physicians’ notes reported having better recall and understanding of their care plans, feeling more in control of their health care, and adhering better to medication regimens. Doctors reported little effect on their work lives.
NEJM: The Road toward Fully Transparent Medical Records
“Forty years ago, Shenkin and Warner argued that giving patients their medical records ‘would lead to more appropriate utilization of physicians and a greater ability of patients to participate in their own care.’ At that time, patients in most states could obtain their records only through litigation, but the rules gradually changed, and in…
JAMA Viewpoint: Consumers Gaining Ground in Health Care
James A. Guest and Lynn Quincy from Consumer Reports discuss public and private health initiatives that are giving consumers more information and more fair opportunities when it comes to obtaining health insurance and health care: “This year has also seen a leap forward in concepts like OpenNotes, a transparency movement that invites and enables patients to review…
The American Nurse: OpenNotes initiative aims to improve patient-clinician communication, care
“Opening visit notes really breaks down the barrier in which patients see doctors and other clinicians as having all the answers…I’d really like nurses to think about patients having access to their visit notes…” – Jan Walker Read more about what nurses from the VA and BIDMC are saying about the OpenNotes movement in the American…
