Dive Brief:
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's new health IT pilot project will give patients the opportunity to input as much information as they want into their electronic health records.
- One of a handful of recipients of a technology grant from The Commonwealth Fund, the center will be one of the first health systems to introduce OurNotes, part of the OpenNotes movement, which also offers patients online access to their doctors' practice notes.
- The grant from the Commonwealth Fund will support work at five sites: original OpenNotes study partners BIDMC, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, Seattle's Group Health Cooperative and Mosaic Life Care in St. Joseph, MO.
Dive Insight:
Beyond being a perplexing component of Stage 2 of meaningful use, patient engagement is becoming an important element of patient satisfaction. Multiple reports, such as a recent Accenture Consumer Survey, indicate that more and more patients see providers' technology capabilities as synonymous with good care. According to a Technology Advice survey, patients look for digital services like online bill pay and appointment scheduling when choosing doctors; a majority of patients value follow-ups after appointments; and only a small number of patients believe that their current physicians offer the digital services they identify as important.
And while the idea of letting patients create their own personal health records isn't new, letting patients add their own notes (and see their doctor's notes) into an EHR could really score patient-satisfaction points for Beth Israel—and help physicians obtain a clearer picture of patient health. Also, if healthcare organizations can find new ways to aggregate all the free-text data and unearth meaningful population-health trends, the positive ripple effect could be profound.