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.
Patient Empowerment
The Rise of the Patient Voice
By Jan Walker, RN, MBA Tom and I began working together in the early 1990’s. Tom had already been causing a stir. He had started one of the first hospital-based primary care teaching practices at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and was constantly examining ways to improve quality in care. Deep down in there,…
Medical Economics: Patient record transparency and the impact on physicians
Many physicians are not comfortable sharing their progress notes with patients, concerned that they will take offense, be confused and add to the practice workload by calling or emailing with questions. But under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), physicians must share their notes with patients who ask. Some physicians have embraced this…
Author Reading: When Patients Teach
Listen to authors Sigall K. Bell, MD (from the OpenNotes team), and Stanley R. Vance Jr, MD, read their Teaching and Learning Moments essay, “When Patients Teach,” published in the April 2016 issue.
When Patients Teach
As soon as the elevator door closed, the tears gave way, and I walked home with my head down … thoughts of my mistakes running rampant.
So began the reflection of a third-year medical student, who described falling short of his residents’ expectations on a history and physical examination. The crucial flaw? He had taken too long. His reflection continued:
[The next day], an elderly patient, traction stockings covering her small, dark brown legs, shuffled toward me. She stopped directly in front of me, her delicate, slightly stooped frame supported by her thin hand, grasping the IV pole. “Young man,” she said, “I heard you speaking to the patient in the bed next to me [last night]. And I just wanted you to know that I’m just so proud of you.… How you spoke to that patient with such care and intelligence. I’m just so proud.”
HISTalk – OpenNotes: From Grassroots Effort to Nationwide Movement
We look at the evolution and future of OpenNotes — from the impact it has had on patient engagement, medication adherence, and physician workflows to the technological challenges of implementing a truly vendor-agnostic tool. By @JennHIStalk Six years ago, the notion that patients could have electronic access to their doctor’s notes was almost unheard of.…
Chicago Tribune: Doctors see patients taking a greater role in their own care
The practice of medicine has moved away from a paternalistic model toward one of collaboration between doctor and patient. This has happened as the information age, propelled by the Internet, has plunged us into an ocean of health information. In the past, doctors may have been happy with passive patients who followed orders and didn’t…
FierceHealthIT: Columbia St. Mary’s Bruce McCarthy: OpenNotes shifts patient-provider power balance
“It’s like being able to hit the replay button on your visit with the doctor,” [McCarthy] said. “It’s a living example of a way to make the patient is a partner into their care. If they’re a partner, they should be all the way in, we should be working from the same medical record, looking at…
HospitalReview: 3 CMOs, CQOs on the ‘biggest win’ for patients this year
We asked three CMOs and chief quality officers from hospitals and health systems across the nation for a favor: Define the “biggest win” for patients in 2015, in their organization or the industry as a whole. The following are their responses, lightly edited for clarity and length. […] Ken Sands, MD, Senior Vice President and…
MedCity News – AMIA: Opening up records helps acute patient engagement, too
The OpenNotes project, now with more than 5 million participants, has proven highly successful in engaging and satisfying patients. Based on early research presented Monday at the American Medical Informatics Association annual symposium in San Francisco, providing patients with full access to their medical records seems to work pretty well in inpatient environments, too. And, as with…
