The procedure and problem lists and patient notes will be available on MyChart later this year and into 2014.

Read  the press release here.

Recently, over 520 of our doctors began sharing their office visit notes with patients.

All primary care doctors and general pediatricians, and selected physicians within pediatric subspecialties, dermatology, endocrinology, pulmonology, nephrology, rheumatology, cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, vascular surgery, neurosurgery, and women’s health—including obstetrics and gynecology and gynecologic oncology—are participating in OpenNotes.

Read Dr Darer’s full post on the KevinMD website.

What is the doctor scribbling down in the chart? Many patients have probably wished they could sneak a peak into their medical records.

Being able to do so is like a proverbial shot in the arm, said physician Tom Delbanco and Jan Walker, founders of OpenNotes at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “Patients feel more in control of their care and understand their health issues better when they are able to read the notes doctors write after their visits,” said Walker.

Read the article here.

For most people, adolescence is a time marked by struggle: the lure of adulthood leads to the fight for emancipation from a parent’s control, and from the condemnation or disappointment of authority figures while they explore their own emerging sense of self.  Physicians have long been told to be neutral and objective when addressing the unique needs of the teenage population, including sexual and reproductive issues as well as questions of mental health.  But as health records are increasingly shared online and EHR notes are made open to patients, teenagers under 18 may have another thing to rail against: the idea that their parents can see what they say to their doctor by logging on to a patient portal.

Read the full post here.

Possibly the most famous consumer of electronic health records is Dave deBronkart, better known as e-Patient Dave.

Several years ago, deBronkart participated in a trial of a new program that permitted patients to view all the notes in their EHR.

“I experienced a direct benefit,” deBronkart recalls. “Weeks after a visit, I thought, ‘Wasn’t I supposed to have something followed up?’ Heaven knows where my printed visit notes were … it was late in the evening, so ordinarily I’d have waited till morning and maybe remembered to call in and have someone look it up—very inefficient and vulnerable to ‘I forgot.’

“Instead, I went online right then and there, just as you might with anything else, from airline reservations to credit card info. There it was: actinic keratosis—a precancerous lesion. I had it removed, quickly, easily, inexpensively.” deBronkart says the diagnosis was “not academic” for him. “Thirty years earlier I had a skin cancer removed from my nose. And about a year later I was found to have a new one on my jaw….”

Now deBronkart’s OpenNotes experience is being deployed at scale, and healthcare will never be the same.

Read the full article here.

I’ll be the first to admit it, I was a bit put off when the receptionist said, “You need to call back the day you’d like to see the doctor.” With such short notice would I even get to see my new family doctor, or would I be triaged to one of his colleagues? Given the highly computerized nature of his practice, would I spend my day filling out forms? Or, worse yet, would the doctor be so focused on data entry that he’d lose sight of me, the patient?

The expansion of  OpenNotes will include more than 500 Geisinger physicians, encompassing all of primary care and general pediatrics, and selected physicians within pediatric subspecialties, dermatology, endocrinology, pulmonology, nephrology, rheumatology, cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, vascular surgery, neurosurgery, and women’s health – including obstetrics and gynecology and gynecologic oncology.

Read the full press release here.

Some highlights from the conversation include: the dramatic improvement between patient and doctor communications; how OpenNotes overcame potential push back and resistance from physicians; patients became more engaged in their personal health care; OpenNotes has been pleasantly surprised at the patient engagement; how advanced technologies and mobile technology are going to impact the future of this idea; and how the OpenNotes team are planning to spread the word and get more patients and doctors improving communications and care with OpenNotes!

Listen to the podcast here.

Despite periodic efforts over almost 5 decades, the idea of having patients review and contribute to their medical records has failed to take hold, even though such practice might engage patients more actively in maintaining their health and managing their care and might also improve quality of care and patient safety. Contemporary trends toward increased transparency, accompanied by evolving health information technologies, provided an opportunity for us to conduct a study examining the effects on both patients and primary care physicians (PCPs) of inviting patients to read their doctors’ visit notes. Bolstered by encouraging findings from this study, and with the goal of informing those who might join in further inquiry, we outline in this “interval examination” challenges we are encountering and strategies we are employing as we explore wider implementation of this practice.

Read the full article on the history of the OpenNotes program, including the current and future prospects for expansion on the JGIM website.

Woods discussed in an interview the power of open medical notes for patients and clinicians: 

Open notes seemed to push patients to become more active participants in their own care and be more prepared. They asked better questions at their visit; it reminded them of things they needed to follow up on, particularly things like repeat testing. One patient we interviewed learned she had anemia and needed to be on iron and asked about it at the next visit.  In the patient’s eyes, they felt like they played an active role in their own care and could remind providers of things that may have slipped through the cracks.

Read the full interview here.