AcademyHealth www.academyhealth.org has announced that Tom Delbanco MD and Jan Walker, R.N. MBA and their colleagues are the winners of this year’s Health Data Liberator award. The award recognizes the team’s work on “OpenNotes” www.opennotes.org, an initiative to encourage healthcare providers to share their visit notes with patients.
This makes it possible for patients to have access to the notes that doctors, nurses, and other clinicians write after a visit as a federally protected right. The goal is to make open notes the standard of care for all patients nationally. Today, more than 13 million people in 37 states now having access to their notes.
Healthcare providers can be reluctant to share notes with patients for fear they won’t understand the notes or will find the contents distressing, but studies reveal compelling reasons to do so. Patients report feeling more in control of their care, more prepared for visits, understand their conditions better, and healthcare providers are pleased to hear that patients with access to their notes, also are better about taking their medications.
“Consumers’ ability to review and confirm their own health information can have a transformational effect on their care and outcomes,” said Lisa Simpson, President and CEO AcademyHealth. “The work Tom, Jan and colleagues are increasing patient access to the information while at the same time, building the evidence base for doctors to share their notes is revolutionizing the patient-doctor relationship.”
“A small change in how we manage notes can bring about a cultural change in how healthcare is delivered and experienced,” said OpenNotes Co-Founder Jan Walker, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a member of the research faculty at the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
“We’re thrilled to be counted among the data liberators,” said Dr. Delbanco, Co-founder of OpenNotes and Professor of General Medicine and Primary Care at Harvard Medical School. “We’ve long known that patients are an underutilized resource in healthcare. Our work at Open Notes teaches us that one of the most important keys to greater activation is giving patients ready access to their own health information.”