Offering patients online access to medical records, including doctors’ visit notes, holds considerable potential to improve care. However, patients may worry about loss of privacy when accessing personal health information through Internet-based patient portals. The OpenNotes study provided patients at three US health care institutions with online access to their primary care doctors’ notes and then collected survey data about their experiences, including their concerns about privacy before and after participation in the intervention.
OpenNotes Pilot
Boston Magazine: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Allows Online Access to Medical Notes
By Jenni Whalen Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) patients will now have online access to the notes that doctors and nurses make about them during care, the hospital announced last week. Through a program called OpenNotes, online records are now available for all primary care, orthopedics, and rehabilitation services patients from BIDMC. The medical…
Fast Company: You Can Now Find Out What Your Doctor Is Writing Down In That File
by Michael Coren, MESc Patients, in theory, can access their own medical records. Yet a thicket of fees, institutional fear, and bureaucracy still stand between most patients and their medical charts. But a new project called OpenNotes suggests there is much to gain and little to fear by sharing medical records with patients as part of treatment. A…
Open Health News: VHA Joins ‘OpenNotes’ Effort for EHR & PHR Systems
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has joined the Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Foundation’s ‘OpenNotes’ initiative as a partner along with other healthcare provider organizations – Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harborview Medical Center, Geisinger Health System, MD Anderson Cancer Center . These organizations are all fully committed to giving patients online access to clinical notes.…
Interval Examination: Moving Toward OpenNotes
By Jan Walker, RN, MBA & Tom Delbanco, MD, MACP Despite periodic efforts over almost 5 decades, the idea of having patients review and contribute to their medical records has failed to take hold, even though such practice might engage patients more actively in maintaining their health and managing their care and might also improve…
RWJF Year in Research
RWJF Year in Research: An Interview with Thomas L. Delbanco Voted No. 2 Most Influential Research Article of 2012, Thomas Delbanco and Janice Walker co-direct OpenNotes, a project that tests the radical yet simple idea that physicians’ notes should be for the patient, not just about the patient. What was the inspiration for this study—the…
American Medical News: Online patient portals: Unveiling the doctor’s note
By Pamela Lewis Dolan, December 31, 2012 “Demand is growing for patient engagement, as the health care landscape shifts toward more shared decision-making. As more health care organizations adopt technology such as electronic health records and patient portals, meeting those expectations has become easier.” Read the full article here.
OpenNotes: Access, Action, & Attitudes
“We need to understand how to communicate better with patients. We have a new mandate.” – Mark Zeidel, MD, BIDMC On October 11, 2012, the OpenNotes team held a meeting to discuss the final results of our year-long OpenNotes study, and explore how to make shared visit notes a more routine part of patient…
Forbes: Opening Doctor’s Notes: A Kumbaya Moment for R’s & D’s?
By Dave Chase, November 26, 2012 Conservatives would love the notion in Open Notes of personal responsibility…. In turn, Progressives would love the notion of transparency and access inherent in Open Notes. Read more here.
WIHI Broadcast of Open Notes
Date: November 1, 2012 Featuring: Tom Delbanco, MD, Richard and Florence Koplow–James Tullis Professor of General Medicine and Primary Care, Harvard Medical School Robert D. Harrington, MD, Professor of Medicine, University of Washington; Medical Director, Harborview Medical Center HIV clinic; Associate Section Chief of Infectious Diseases, Harborview Medical Center Richard Martin, MD, FAAFP, Department Director of Community Practice Service…
