Word: patients
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Luckily, Harris' IT team was able to solve one problem for doctors and nurses right away with the digital chart. Hospital policy mandates that every time a Cleveland Clinic patient sees a doctor in any of 37 buildings on the main campus or dozens of satellite locations in Florida, Abu Dhabi and southeastern Ohio, that doctor will be holding his or her medical chart. With paper records, physicians didn't have those records 20% of the time. As soon as charts were digitized, EHRs were at their fingertips. "No more repeat tests, no more taking extensive histories," says Gene Lazuta...
...doctors' resistance broke down, the technologists turned to patients, who also needed a little convincing. Placing exam-room computers on moving carts was an important early step, so that physicians didn't have to turn away from the patient to enter data into the terminal. This helped resolve a common patient complaint, that electronic records seem impersonal...
Harris put together a diverse collection of health-care providers and computer scientists to create Cleveland Clinic's flagship online product, MyChart. Launched in 2005 on the clinic's website, MyChart allows patients to access their EHRs and find up-to-date medical research on their ailments. Doctors must log all examinations, lab results, prescriptions and diagnoses for patients to review. Mary Adams, who lives in a western suburb of Cleveland, is one patient who has come to rely on MyChart. "I can log on, it reminds me I need a tetanus booster, and I schedule it," she says...
Cosgrove believes giving patients access to their EHRs will improve care. For one, errors are more easily avoided. The electronic chart automatically alerts doctors when the drugs they prescribe are inappropriate or could cause harmful interactions with medicine a patient is already taking. Young's patients even note typos in their charts, corrections that could avert disaster. "They'll point out things like, 'Hey, doc, I had my left coronary artery operated on, but you've got right written down here,'" Young says. "It's an important distinction...
...team has addressed the thorniest issues in EHRs--patient privacy--with an abundance of caution. In addition to standard confidentiality safeguards, the hospital opens an ongoing e-mail dialogue with patients to give them full disclosure about exactly who has accessed their data. "Some people complain we communicate too often," Lemon says...