At The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, patients and their referring physicians have been given access to their electronic medical records—including their doctors’ notes—since May 2009 via a secure Web-based portal.
Despite little promotion of the site to patients, to date more than 40,000 individuals have viewed their records over 605,000 times. In that same period, more than 1300 referring physicians accessed the records of the patients they referred to us over 28,000 times. Currently, 84% of our active patients have obtained access to their electronic records.
Patients have become avid readers of their notes—their 2 most common requests are for a correction of something recorded incorrectly and for a simple method of translating medical terminology within the record. Our referring physicians are happy with the tool, and we are planning to cease mailing records to referring physicians.
Visit myMD Anderson to register for the patient portal.
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