With patients across the country voicing a growing desire for greater engagement in and control over their medical care, a new study involving patients in Boston, Pennsylvania and Seattle will examine the impact of adding a new layer of openness to a traditionally one-sided element of the doctor-patient relationship\u2014the notes that doctors record during and after patients\u2019 visits.<\/p>\n
Funded through a $1.4 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Pioneer Portfolio\u2014which supports innovative ideas and projects that may lead to important breakthroughs in health and health care\u2014the 12-month OpenNotes\u00a9 project will evaluate the impact on both patients and physicians of sharing, through online medical record portals, the comments and observations made by physicians after each patient encounter. Approximately 100 primary care physicians and 25,000 patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, and Harborview Medical Center in Seattle will participate in the 12-month trial.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Beth Israel Deaconess?? Why, that’s the hospital where I see my primary Dr. Danny Sands! Not surprisingly, he volunteered to be one of the 100 doctors, and I volunteered to be one of the 25,000 patients.<\/p>\n
I spoke this week about the project with RWJF’s Steve Downs. My view has always been that of course <\/em>I should be able to see my records: whose data is it, anyway? But Steve points out, correctly, that you can’t shove culture change down people’s throats, so RWJF is spending big bucks to collect evidence.<\/p>\nTo the credit of everyone involved, they’re allowing us participants to blog and chat about our participation: “Somebody might come up with good uses for the notes that we haven’t anticipated.” Hallelujah; that’s Web 2.0 \/ participatory thinking.<\/p>\n
The project went live just before my already-scheduled visit this week with Dr. Sands. I’m writing this before I go online to review those visit notes. If I have anything to say, I’ll say it here.<\/p>\n
I encourage you to read those short pieces linked above. They’re informative and thought-provoking.<\/p>\n
p.s. It’s fitting that this project is funded by Robert Wood Johnson: they also provided the original funding for our founder “Doc Tom” Ferguson to write that white paper. And look where we are now.<\/p>\n
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The opening anecdote of the e-patient white paper tells of a patient who impersonated a doctor in 1994, to get his hands on an article about an operation he was about to have. He got busted. Two years later episode 139 of Seinfeld had something similar – Kramer impersonates a doctor to try to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,367,5,59,7,2],"tags":[76,4380,165,7709,168,55,214,5319],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-medical-records","category-ptdoc-co-care","category-policy-issues","category-positive-patterns","category-trendsprinciples","tag-doctors","tag-elaine","tag-health-care","tag-medical-records","tag-online","tag-patients","tag-physician","tag-seattle"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
"OpenNotes" project begins: what happens when patients can see the physician's visit notes? - SPM Blog<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n