More than one million patients in Oregon and Southwest Washington will soon have electronic access to the notes their health care providers include in medical records.
Spurred by the efforts of the nonprofit group, We Can Do Better, the health providers that have committed to practicing “open notes” include Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University, Providence Medical Group Oregon, The Portland Clinic, The Vancouver Clinic, Portland VA Medical Center, OCHIN and Salem Health. Each of these groups is already practicing open notes in some form or intends to do so sometime in 2014 or 2015.
Kaiser will begin making clinician notes available to its members across the region starting today. “Now, nearly 500,000 Kaiser Permanente members will, for the first time ever, be able to easily view the notes charted by their doctor during an office visit,” says Michael McNamara, MD, chief medical information officer for Kaiser Permanente Northwest.
Major systems implementing this practice now include the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic, in addition to the VA.
For more information:
Visit: wecandobetter.org for more information about We Can Do Better.