(Todd Ackerman/Houston Chronicle)
Texas doctors are at the vanguard of what U.S. researchers say is an inevitable revolution to make consultation notes and other records easily accessible to patients.
The idea, at odds with the decades-old attitude that medical records belong to doctors because they’re the only ones trained to interpret them, is being tested in an ongoing national study that has already confirmed that patients want to read their notes but most doctors are still resistant.
“Many doctors aren’t there yet, but this is going to happen, this can’t be stopped,” said Jan Walker, a nurse at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the study’s lead author. “In today’s more transparent society, patients want this – and it should be to everyone’s benefit.”
The change is being pioneered at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which since 2009 has maintained online portals where patients can call up the typed notes their doctor took during their appointments as well as the rest of their records. Such efforts are in the process of being implemented at all six UT health campuses.
(Read more at the Houston Chronicle)
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