So my online buddy Mr. X (actually probably Dr. X) from
HIStalk published an article from the
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association about
Inviting patients and care partners to read doctors' notes.
Here is the abstract of the paper:
We examined the acceptability and effects of delivering doctors' visit notes electronically (via OpenNotes) to patients and care partners with authorized access to
patients' electronic medical records. Adult patients and care partners at Geisinger Health System were surveyed at baseline and after 12 months of exposure to OpenNotes.
Reporting on care partner access to OpenNotes, patients and care partners stated that they had better agreement about patient treatment plans and more productive
discussions about their care. At follow-up, patients were more confident in their ability to manage their health, felt better prepared for office visits, and reported
understanding their care better than at baseline. Care partners were more likely to access and use patient portal functionality and reported improved communication with
patients' providers at follow-up. Our findings suggest that offering patients and care partners access to doctors' notes is acceptable and improves communication and
patients' confidence in managing their care.
We give this a hearty
DUH. I guess next they will be telling us the sky is blue and water is wet. Well, water is wet, by definition, but the sky is
really
black. Anyway, People are going to be curious about what someone, anyone,
particularly a doctor says about them. So they are going to go snoop if they can. Once they snoop, they get informed, and informed people make better decisions.
I don't know who or what
OpenNotes is, they have no explanation on their site, but I can surmise that they are
some kind of clunky third party application that scrapes the practitioner's patient encounter documentation from the EMR database, or even worse, the practitioner is
required to copy and paste the notes into the worse-than-clunky system. So yeah, it's a great idea, but I'm less than impressed by this installation of this particular bell on this
particular cat.
So of course,
Sentia Health does it better. We've allowed patients to read all the practitioner's notes since
2009. Your doc uses our EMR, you get a log in and password to view all of your encounter information. This includes notes, x-rays, images, diagnoses, tests, treatments
and
everything else your practitioner puts in for you. there is no copying and pasting or having a
kludgy third party 'system' come and read your doctor's database. What is this OpenNotes security model, anyway? you
don't want someone in Kazakhstan reading about your carbuncles,
or worse. Nope, you need an EMR with a BUILT IN patient portal. Yup. there is only one.
So tell me again why you aren't telling your doctor about us. If you are a doctor, why aren't you using us? We have technology that is getting close to a decade old
that is still making news in the medical industry. Maybe I should hire a marketing firm. We provide:
Real Solutions
Visit
https://sentiahealth.com or email us at
info@sentiahealth.com