For years, the woman went to a Boston hospital to talk to a therapist about being depressed and overweight. The therapist, listening closely, asked questions and jotted down notes on a memo pad. Until recently, the 54-year-old woman didn’t know what her therapist was writing. Then, last month, her therapist offered to share his notes…
Mental Health Notes
The Healthcare Blog: Is Sharing Mental Health Notes with Patients a Good Idea?
Would allowing patients to read their mental health notes provide more benefits than risks? In a recent article in JAMA my colleagues and I argue that it would. While transparent medical records are gaining favor in primary care settings throughout the country through the OpenNotes initiative, there has been reluctance to allow patients to see what their…
Boston Globe: Doctors’ notes on mental health shared with patients
Policy shift at Beth Israel Deaconess At the end of every workday, psychiatrists, social workers, and other mental health providers write notes describing their patients’ visits. It is where they chronicle paranoid behavior, excessive drinking, or relationship problems. These candid comments often are available to other doctors, but they are rarely shared with patients themselves.…
Making Mental Health Notes Available to Patients
BIDMC launches pilot, advocates for openness Writing for “A Piece of My Mind,” appearing April 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), lead author and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center psychiatrist, Michael Kahn, MD, urges mental health clinicians to begin sharing the visit notes they write with their patients. “Nationally, the momentum…
