As of December 2014, nearly five million patients in the U.S. had received online access to their clinicians’ notes. The number is expected to increase in the coming years as electronic health records become more widespread and internet portals become more secure, according to an analysis published recently in BMJ.
“We expect fully open records to foster truly collaborative patient-clinician relationships,” the authors wrote. “The variety of institutions, doctors, and patients taking up this practice suggests it is a concept widely applicable to healthcare. Though evidence is incomplete, there is already a compelling case for further implementation and exploration.”
The authors mentioned a 12-month study that included 105 physicians at primary care practices at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Massachusetts, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania and Harborview Medical Center in Washington.
More than 19,000 patients received access to their online medical records, and more than 80 percent accessed the information. The authors noted that more than two-thirds of the patients said they better understand their conditions, took better care of themselves, were more adherent to their medications and had more control over their care.
Meanwhile, 3 percent of doctors said they spent more time answering patient questions outside of visits and 11 percent said they spend more time writing or editing notes.
Following the study, all three hospitals extended their policy to ambulatory services. Since the study, other institutions have begun sharing information with patients, including the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, MD Anderson Cancer Hospital, Kaiser Permanente Northwest and Group Health Cooperative.
The authors said that nurse practitioners, physician assistants, clinical pharmacologists and occupational and physical therapists also sometimes share their notes with patients.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.