Five years ago last week, I posted this. A lot has changed since then. Next week I’ll be re-posting what happened next, back then. The subject is still just as valid, so do think about it. Here’s a “reprint”:
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I want you to think about something for a few days.
Imagine that for all your life, and your parents’ lives, your money had been managed by other people who had extensive training and licensing. Imagine that all your records were in their possession, and you could occasionally see parts of them, but you just figured the pros had it under control.
Imagine that you knew you weren’t a financial planner but you wanted to take as much responsibility as you could – to participate. Imagine that some money managers (not all, but many) attacked people who wanted to make their own decisions, saying “Who’s the financial planner here?”
Then imagine that one day you were allowed to see the records, and you found out there were a whole lot of errors, and the people carefully guarding your data were not as on top of things as everyone thought.
I’ll be back.
I’ve thought about this a great deal.
I think you’ve omitted one aspect of ‘imagine that…’ in your scenario:
Imagine that, when you you point out that you need easy access to your records because of these errors, you are told that one of the reasons for denying your access is because they are afraid you will be upset by the errors and want them fixed.
Peter, sorry for the delay in releasing your comment from “jail” – the comment system is being obnoxious.
Re they’re afraid you’ll want errors fixed: I’m sure you know (as savvy as you are) that HIPAA regulations say errors HAVE to be fixed. So I’m guessing you’re saying some shops make access hard, because they don’t have to fix mistakes that nobody ever gets to SEE. Si?
Welcome to healthcare, still. In spite of all the EMR implementations from sea to shining sea … we’re still in the dark on the patient side for the most part.
> we’re still in the dark on the patient side for the most part.
Yeah, but I have to say, on the grand scale of how fast things change, it’s AMAZING how many providers are now going OpenNotes. It’s over 3,000,000 patients now, with an impressive list of big-name adopters. That’s MIGHTY fast for a big cultural change like this.
IMO one of the subtly brilliant things in the design of the OpenNotes study was that they pointedly asked what patients want and then asked if patients want more. The answer, as I’m sure you know, was a resounding yes, to the point where it’s now a competitive business issue.
How many top-tier journal articles have explicitly studied the business impact of an IT policy?? This stuff rocks.
And yes, now that we’ve invited people into the archives and attic, the work will begin to clean up. And this isn’t just a patient rights issue – no doctor or nurse benefits from being given erroneous information. I mean, what the heck! Let patients help!