Open Notes

Sigall Bell

Tackling Ambulatory Safety Risks Through Patient Engagement: What 10,000 Patients and Families Say About Safety-Related Knowledge, Behaviors, and Attitudes After Reading Visit Notes

Background: Ambulatory safety risks including delayed diagnoses or missed abnormal test results are difficult for clinicians to see, because they often occur in the space between visits. Experts advocate greater patient engagement to improve safety, but strategies are limited. Patient access to clinical notes (“OpenNotes”) may help close the safety gap between visits. Methods: We…

Helping Caregivers Help Patients

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By Hannah Chimowitz, BA & Sigall K. Bell, MD – posted first on The Joint Commission Blog
An estimated 43.5 million adults in the United States provide unpaid care to an adult or child for an average of 24.4 hours each week.1 More than half of these caregivers also work full time.2 Because patients supported by caregivers are elderly, frail, or chronically ill, informal caregiving represents a subset of health care interactions that are particularly complex, prone to errors, and costly.

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Empowering informal caregivers with health information: OpenNotes as a safety strategy.

Patients frequently depend on informal caregivers (e.g., family, friends, or paid workers) to assist with various aspects of medical care, such as medication administration and travel to medical appointments. OpenNotes seeks to share clinicians’ notes with patients through patient portals. Although patients frequently grant portal access to caregivers, the impact of this improved access to…

Soliciting patient feedback on visit notes: An educational opportunity

Patient and family engagement is gaining attention as a priority in patient care1 and medical education.2 OpenNotes, an innovation that invites patients to read their visit notes through a secure online portal, has demonstrated several health benefits.3 Over five million U.S. patients have online access to their notes today; shared visit notes may not only engage patients in care but also open the door to new educational innovations.

Intrigued by the idea of patient/family feedback on visit notes, our research team asked residents and their supervisors whether such feedback would be helpful.4 In surveys and focus groups, many agreed it would be.

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Becker’s Health IT and CIO review: 7 things to know about BIDMC’s OpenNotes program

Approximately five years ago, clinicians at Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center started OpenNotes, an initiative that provides patients access to clinicians’ notes in an effort to accelerate transparency, as well as improve patient safety. The researchers recently released key findings from the pilot program, which largely demonstrated the benefits of giving patients access to…