The Association of Medical Directors of Information System is joining forces with OpenNotes, working with the initiative to increase patients' engagement with their physicians by making medical records available to read.
"Our partnership with OpenNotes is an opportunity for us to support the AMDIS mission of improving healthcare through the use of information technology, by empowering patients with their own health information," said William Bria, MD, chairman of AMDIS, whose membership comprises CMIOs and other physician informaticists.
Clinicians such as those are "extremely savvy about technology and play a leadership role in advancing" it, said OpenNotes' Homer Chin, MD, who focuses on broadening the project's IT integrations.
"While OpenNotes isn't a technology itself, notes are most easily shared using existing electronic health record platforms," Chin explained. "This partnership allows these doctors to continue to use their knowledge to do the right thing for patients. We share the goal of getting patients, and often their families, literally 'on the same page' with their doctors."
[Also: OpenNotes: 'This is not a software package, this is a movement']
Research touted by OpenNotes indicates that "a second set of eyes" on patient records can help improve quality and safety. The sharing of electronic records, meanwhile, may play a vital role in helping care partners, from pediatrics through geriatrics, make better, more informed decisions about their loved ones' care.
Speaking at the Healthcare IT News Pop Health 2016 Forum in Boston this past month, OpenNotes co-founder and Harvard Medical School professor Tom Delbanco MD, said patients participating in the program felt more in control, had better recall and improved understanding of their care, and showed better medication adherence.
Despite initial fears that patients would be be skeptical or disinterested in reading their doctors' notes, patients want them. “They read them. They share them. They're not scared of them," Delbanco said.
[Also: OpenNotes makes strides but misgivings linger]
In 2010 Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harborview Medical Center, and Geisinger Health System launched the initiative, inviting 20,000 patients to read clinical notes via secure, online portals. Six years later, more than 8 million patients have ready access to their own EHRs.
The aim is to expand OpenNotes to 50 million people in the next three years.
"Open Notes is fundamental to shifting the center of care from the health care system to the individual person, and while there are many components to this critical shift, the seminal role of OpenNotes is clear," said John Mattison, MD, chief medical information officer at Kaiser Permanente. "In our system, we now have more than 600 doctors sharing notes with more than 1.2 million patient encounters, and that number is growing exponentially. We expect all 8,000 doctors to be on OpenNotes by the end of 2017."
Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
