Open Notes Increases Patients’ Access to Physician’s Notes and Encourages Transparency.

13 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Health Law, Health Reform

≈ Comments Off on Open Notes Increases Patients’ Access to Physician’s Notes and Encourages Transparency.

Tags

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, EHR Intelligence, Geisinger Health System, Harvard Medical School, Health Reform, Jan Walker, Jennifer Bresnick, New England Journal of Medicine, Open Notes, Progress Notes

NEJM: Open EHR Notes Have A Bright Future As Acceptance Grows, by Jennifer Bresnick, EHR Intelligence

http://tinyurl.com/lwte3yg

Physicians are beginning to understand and accept the value of allowing patients to see the majority of their health information, says a perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine, and have fewer worries about what patients will do with that data as they adjust to a new level of transparency. After a wildly successful OpenNotes pilot program conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Geisinger Health System, the idea of sharing progress notes and other EHR data with patients is becoming more mainstream as patient engagement turns into a key piece of healthcare reform.

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In the perspective, Jan Walker, a registered nurse and researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues wrote, ‘The knowledge that patients (and often their families) will have access to records affects the intent and sometimes the content of clinical documentation.’