OpenNotes

See the following -

Patients Strongly Support Access to Clinical Notes

Pamela Lewis Dolan | American Medical News | December 29, 2011

When Harvard Medical School researchers came up with the idea to open up clinical notes to patients as an experiment, their first step was finding out how people felt about the idea -- and what they expected to happen as a result. What they found were near-unanimous support from patients and opinions from physicians that ran the gamut -- enthusiasm to fear for patients' safety.

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Patients Want to Read Doctors' Notes, But Many Doctors Balk

Nancy Shute | NPR | December 21, 2011

Doctors write about their patients all the time, in notes detailing office visits and treatments. But for patients, those notes are a closed book. Maybe the doctor has scribbled that the patient was "difficult," as Elaine discovered when she peeked at her chart in a memorable Seinfeld episode. When her dermatologist saw her snooping, he grabbed the chart out of her hands. Read More »

Personal Health Tech Plot Thickens

Tom Sullivan | Government Health IT | June 17, 2014

Apple. Google. Samsung. WebMD. Each has made moves recently into personal health technologies. And they’re coming at a time when the nation’s healthcare is stressed and federal efforts are geared toward removing costs.

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Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Examine the Impact of OpenNotes on Patient Safety

Press Release | BIDMC | August 12, 2015

Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) are homing in on the potential benefits of allowing patients access to the notes their clinicians write after a visit. An article published in the August edition of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety suggests that this kind of patient engagement has the power to improve safety and quality of care. The practice of sharing visit notes more readily began with the OpenNotes study in 2010. More than 100 primary care doctors at three hospitals invited 20,000 of their patients to read their visit notes through a secure, patient website.

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The Promise And Peril Of OpenNotes

Gizabeth Shyder | KevinMD.com | May 1, 2014

...I worry about and applaud the possible effects of patients being able to read their notes online. We doctors need our own forum to make notes without worrying about hurting our patient’s feelings...

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To Boost Engagement, Remove Barriers To Consumers' Access To Records

Susan D. Hall | Fierce Health IT | February 11, 2014

As healthcare organizations seek to boost consumer engagement, it's important to understand how traditional policies on access to health information might cause roadblocks, according to a practice brief at the Journal of AHIMA.  Policies and practices should be continuously examined and updated to ensure that they do not present impediments to consumer engagement, authors of the brief write.

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Two Studies Find that Patients Want Access to Their Health Records, Including Clinical Pathology Test Data

Pamela Scherer McLeod | Dark Daily | February 3, 2012

Data from two studies here in the United States affirms that patients want access to their health records. Consequently, health systems are increasingly making it easier for patients to get access to prescription lists, medical laboratory test results and now even doctors’ notes. These findings are important for clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups.

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UCHealth’s OpenNotes Journey: From a Few Docs to Enterprise-Wide Acceptance

Rajiv Leventhal | Healthcare Informatics | March 16, 2017

Although the OpenNotes initiative—designed to give patients access and ability to read visit notes online—has now reached 12 million patients in the U.S. alone, there have been challenges and pushback along the way, dating back to the beginning of the movement. In fact, says CT Lin, M.D., chief medical information officer (CMIO) at UCHealth, a 7-hospital, 400-clinic system in the Rocky Mountain region, the “original” OpenNotes was actually called “SPPARRO,” or “Systems Providing Patients Access to Records Online”...

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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. Read More »