Earlier this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) embraced OpenNotes, enabling more than 1 million veterans who currently have access to the VA personal health record to view or download their own medical notes along with their health record information via the My HealtheVet Blue Button. In a recently published study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR), the VA's Susan Woods, MD, MPH, a longtime champion of open access and transparency, examined patients’ views and experiences with reading their health records, including clinical notes. The study is the first qualitative look at VA patients’ experiences viewing electronic records that included clinical notes and lab test results. Woods and her colleagues showed that viewing records and notes appeared to empower patients and increase their involvement in their own care but Woods says new communication skills will be needed to optimize the user experience.

In a recent interview, Woods discussed the power of open medical notes for patients and clinicians.   

By Jan Walker, RN, MBA, and Suzanne Leveille, RN, PhD, of OpenNotes

This is cross-posted from ADVANCE Perspective: Nurses

 As nurses, we've always been focused on the patient. Teaching patients about their health and advocating for patients are both incredibly important parts of the job. That's why we got involved with OpenNotes-an initiative that invites patients to review the visit notes written by their doctors, nurses, or other clinicians.

As New Year’s Eve approaches, let’s take a look at a few of Pioneering Ideas’ greatest hits of 2012 one last time.

We rang in 2012 with a post about an idea Steve Downs called simple and dangerous—OpenNotes, an experiment that has enabled patients to read their doctors’ medical notes. We believe OpenNotes has the potential to transform the way patients engage with health care professionals—and take charge of their health.

Over the past seven years, Project HealthDesign supported 14 dedicated research teams in devising fascinating ways to use mobile technology to broaden the patient-provider dialogue and empower patients to manage their health outside of the clinical setting.

In this “tell us your story” feature, National Program Director Patricia Flatley Brennan discusses how through grantees’ work and collaboration, they came to the simple but powerful conclusion that some of the richest and most essential information about people’s health isn’t found at a clinic or hospital: it’s found in their personal attention to the details of their own lives.

By Glenn D. Steele Jr., MD, CEO of Geisinger Health System

A group of health leaders, consumer advocates, and medical professionals are gathering in Washington, D.C., today to advance a simple idea that I see as transformational—having doctors make medical notes available to their patients so they can become more engaged in their care. As a health system CEO who also is a doctor, I believe it is an ethical imperative that our patients at Geisinger know everything that we know about them. And, I think it’s a logical imperative that if we can open up our medical visit notes to our patients, we’ll find out what they understand and what they don’t, so we can answer questions and work as partners to chart a path to better health.

The idea of open medical notes is not just an interesting theory. Geisinger just participated in a year-long study called OpenNotes with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Harborview Medical Center in Seattle in which more than 100 primary care doctors invited more than 13,000 patients to see their doctors’ notes. The evidence, published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, makes clear that open notes is something patients want, something they use, and something that doesn’t unduly burden doctors. In fact, it also is something that could lead to better care and potentially could save health care dollars—as many as 70 percent of patients said that having access to their own visit notes prompted them to adhere to the medications their doctors prescribed.