Hospital: patients read physicians' notes

Electronic medical records and a push for consumer involvement make it more acceptable -- and imperative -- to release more information, say Beth Israel project backers.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. Posted July 6, 2009.

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Tom Delbanco, MD, conducted an experiment in the 1970s in which he asked patients to take their own notes during clinical visits and compare them to their physicians' notes.

The experiment didn't last long, he said, because when patients asked other physicians for notes, "doctors thought the patients were crazy," he said. "They literally said, 'I am calling a psychiatrist.' "

Now, more than 30 years later, Dr. Delbanco, an internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and professor of general medicine and primary care at Harvard Medical School, is trying again. He is one of the leaders of an experiment at Beth Israel that allows patients unfettered access to their doctors' notes made in relation to their visits. The idea is to see how granting real-time access to clinical notes will change the dynamic between physicians and patients./.../