The Cleveland Clinic is stepping up patients’ access to their medical information by providing secure online access to most of the data stored in their medical files. The newly-available data will be accessible through the Clinic’s existing patient portal, MyChart, according to EMR Daily News.
Currently, patients who use the Clinic’s MyChart app can view a limited list of data , including their after-visit summary, medications list, allergies, immunization records, preventative care details, laboratory results, and radiology reports. If they want to see any more of their information, they have to get a hard copy of their patient record.
However, the new MyChart EMR offers patients access to just about every type of information doctors can see, including pathology records, x-ray reports, physician notes and lists of current health issues doctors use to describe a patient’s health status. It will also offer access to recent concerns and known diagnoses.
This marks the most recent of several steps the Clinic to expand patient access to their medical records. Earlier this year, EMR Daily News notes, reports associated with medical images including MRI, CT, ultrasounds, and mammograms were made available online through MyChart. Starting this month, the Clinic will start automatically releasing pathology reports to patients through MyChart, though there will be a delay which gives the patient a chance to have talked to their doctor about the report prior to seeing it.
The EMR system is expected to be fully transparent to the patient sometime next year, Clinic leaders say.
Expect to see a series of announcements of this kind, folks. Increasing healthcare data transparency is clearly on everyone’s agenda, and though leading organizations like the Cleveland Clinic may be at the forefront, what they’re doing is likely to become the standard for hospitals and clinics in the not-so-distant future.
