EHR Proxy (Shared) Access for Family Care Partners

Planning for transformational change to care partner shared access to the online patient portal

Millions of older adults in the United States manage their health with the help of family and other unpaid care partners. Yet despite the importance of family care partners for ensuring optimal quality of life and care for older adults, they are often unidentified, assessed or supported in care delivery.

The aim of “Engaging Family Caregivers through Shared Access to the Electronic Health Record” is to develop and test ways of increasing care partner use of online patient portals via shared access (sometimes referred to as “proxy access”).

Through this work, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are partnering with and building on the OpenNotes movement, which promotes shared access to electronic health records through secure patient portals.

This work aims to enable family care partners to access more easily the health information needed to coordinate and manage care of older adults, particularly those with complex health conditions. This intervention is being co-designed with input from multiple stakeholders, including patients, care partners, clinicians, and healthcare administrators.

Project goals

Phase 1 Goal: Develop partnerships with three clinical sites.

Phase 2 Goals:

• Create educational materials and toolkits for patients, clinicians, and administrative staff, and
• Develop a proposal and evaluation plan for a health system-level demonstration project to be conducted in a subsequent phase