If there is one group of stakeholders totally confused by the health care system we have, it’s the individual consumer. The consumers don’t understand the legal jargon included in most health plan Certificates of Coverage (COC), they don’t understand how to navigate around the primary care/specialty care maze we send them through, and they don’t understand how the pricing and financial structure works. I’m not saying consumers are ignorant. They simply have not been provided the information they need to participate effectively. Our health care system has been very good at keeping information in silos. Consumers have had to rely on other sources to try to get the information they require to make the decisions they need to make. We can safely assume this lack of “transparency” impacts efficiency, cost, compliance, and possibly the outcomes associated with particular medical events. The Journal of General Internal Medicine recently published an article highlighting the fact that consumers want full access to all their records and are willing to make some privacy concessions in the interest of making their medical records completely transparent. Consumers want more information than they are being provided today.
Through a $1.2 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and with the participation of 75-130 primary care physicians connected to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pa, and Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, a project is underway to answer a basic question: Can improving communication with the patient lead to better health care outcomes?
The answer seems obvious.
Through the OpenNotes project http://www.myopennotes.org/, health care providers will be using processes to provide patients with access to their primary care physician’s visit notes through an electronic medical record. While EMRs traditionally include such things as lab results, biometrics, and medication lists the office notes themselves are traditionally not accessible to the patient. This project is designed to determine if the office notes themselves can be repositioned to be “for the patient, instead of about the patient.”
Not all providers are enthralled with the idea. Some believe that providing access to the notes only adds to the possibility for misinterpretation and miscommunication. They believe the office notes are clinical and cannot be useful to the average consumer.
This argument highlights one of the more significant problems in health care- everybody is talking in different languages.
The OpenNotes project hopes to address the following:
1. Create a more transparent and democratic health care environment
2. Enhance patient-doctor communication
3. Improve the accuracy of provider notes- ultimately reducing the possibility for litigation
4. Increase shared decision-making and improve patient satisfaction
5. Help patients and families become more actively involved in follow-up and compliance
6. Improve patient recall after a visit.
The goals are admirable and the intent of the project is certainly heading in the right direction for the consumer and patient. Sometimes I just wonder if we need $1.2 million and a 12-month research project to do what we know is the right thing anyway.
Through a $1.2 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and with the participation of 75-130 primary care physicians connected to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pa, and Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, a project is underway to answer a basic question: Can improving communication with the patient lead to better health care outcomes?
The answer seems obvious.
Through the OpenNotes project http://www.myopennotes.org/, health care providers will be using processes to provide patients with access to their primary care physician’s visit notes through an electronic medical record. While EMRs traditionally include such things as lab results, biometrics, and medication lists the office notes themselves are traditionally not accessible to the patient. This project is designed to determine if the office notes themselves can be repositioned to be “for the patient, instead of about the patient.”
Not all providers are enthralled with the idea. Some believe that providing access to the notes only adds to the possibility for misinterpretation and miscommunication. They believe the office notes are clinical and cannot be useful to the average consumer.
This argument highlights one of the more significant problems in health care- everybody is talking in different languages.
The OpenNotes project hopes to address the following:
1. Create a more transparent and democratic health care environment
2. Enhance patient-doctor communication
3. Improve the accuracy of provider notes- ultimately reducing the possibility for litigation
4. Increase shared decision-making and improve patient satisfaction
5. Help patients and families become more actively involved in follow-up and compliance
6. Improve patient recall after a visit.
The goals are admirable and the intent of the project is certainly heading in the right direction for the consumer and patient. Sometimes I just wonder if we need $1.2 million and a 12-month research project to do what we know is the right thing anyway.
Be Well
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