Guest podcast: Suzanne Leveille from OpenNotes
I now present the latest health IT-related podcast from Sivad Business Solutions, an interview with Suzanne Leveille, research director of OpenNotes, a project to give patients online access to the entirety of their own medical records, including the visit notes from clinicians. Leveille describes a trial at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania and Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. She reported that not one of the 105 participating physicians asked for the access to be shut off after a year. In some cases, patients even discovered errors and prevented adverse events.
Here is the description from Sivad:
A pleasure to welcome Suzanne Leveille to the program today. Suzanne is a professor of nursing at The University of Massachusetts-Boston, and the research director for OpenNotes.
OpenNotes is an initiative that invites patients to review their visit notes written by their doctors, nurses, or other clinicians.
As a patient, you have the right to read the notes your doctor or clinician writes about you during or after your appointment. Having the chance to read and discuss them with your doctor or family member can help you take better control of your health and health care.
As a healthcare professional, you may build better relationships with your patients and take better care of them when you share your visit notes. Our evidence suggests that opening up visit notes to patients may make care more efficient, improve communication, and most importantly may help patients become more actively involved with their health and health care.
Some highlights from the conversation include: the dramatic improvement between patient and doctor communications; how they overcome potential push back and resistance from physicians; patients became more engaged in their personal health care; OpenNotes has been pleasantly surprised at the patient engagement; how advanced technologies and mobile technology are going to impact the future of this idea; and how they are planning to spread the word and get more patients and doctors improving communications and care with OpenNotes!
howdy
I have to disagree with the assessment of open notes in its current incarnation. The problem is an input-output problem
Computers excel at abstracting data storage from presentation. That means that data can be stored in one format, and displayed in an infinite number of ways depending on the context.
The problem with open notes is that it violates that concept. Patient portals very much embrace that concept. Although I agree patient portals are too limited in their current forms, they help summarize data in a way that can be more optimized for patients
If you’re interested, we can continue conversation offline
The OpenNotes project began as a yearlong experiment to investigate patients and doctors’ attitudes about sharing a visit note. Our most recent publication in the Annals of Internal Medicine reports the findings after a 12-month trial in which patients were invited to read their primary care doctor’s visit notes.