Successful OpenNotes Implementations Require Portal Changes, More Communication

The OpenNotes movement, in which healthcare organizations offer patients access to their clinical notes in the portal, has spread like wildfire. In just a few years it has grown to 184 confirmed health systems, with another 31 that have implemented but not documented their use, and more expressing interest every day. Yet at many healthcare organizations, the percentage of portal users reading clinical notes is still quite low, according to a new white paper and recent webinar by the nonprofit OpenNotes team.

When OpenNotes asked clinical groups for data on note-opening rates, most said it was something they did not measure, and indeed most EHR portal designs do not make it easy for them to gather that data. The OpenNotes team did collect data from 26 organizations and found that four organizations, two with homegrown EHR systems and two on Epic, had the best open rates — ranging from 21 to 34 percent, followed by eight organizations with 6 to 10 percent, with the bottom 14 reporting only 0.27 to 5 percent open rates. 

“We were stunned by the results,” said John Santa, M.D., M.P.H., OpenNotes’ director of dissemination. In many organizations, turning on OpenNotes was described as a non-event. “Sad to say that is because in some cases not much is happening,” added Santa, who played a leadership role in starting the Northwest OpenNotes Consortium and he now leads the development of future consortia. One problem is that in some cases patients are not aware of their notes or can’t find them. “Now we do know of many robust implementations where tens of thousands of patients are seeing their notes and are feeling the benefits,” Santa stressed. “But for OpenNotes to lead to best outcomes, we need to take steps to maximize the benefits.”

Their white paper notes that from the data they have gathered, “it is likely multiple factors, including portal navigation, lack of or ineffective reminders to read notes, and insufficient communication strategies contribute to low note-opening rates.”

“What we have learned is that turning it on is not sufficient,” said Cait DesRoches, DrPh, OpenNotes’ executive director and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Evidence suggests patients are not aware that they can read notes or they can’t find them.” Additionally, clinician anxiety around transparency is still an obstacle, she said. 

Santa noted discrepancies among customers of different EHR vendors. He said that while there are many Cerner, Allscripts and Meditech customers deploying OpenNotes, they have not developed ways to generate note-opening rates for customers. Epic, he said, has launched multiple near- and long-term changes to improve note-opening rates and included note-opening metrics in recent versions of its dashboard.

During the webinar Marcia Sparling, M.D., a rheumatologist and medical director for informatics and specialties at the Vancouver Clinic in Vancouver, Wash., made some observations about her organization’s experience. The Vancouver Clinic started piloting OpenNotes in 2014. It has a high patient portal usage rate of 82 percent, and early note-opening rates were close to 20 percent. But when the clinic did an Epic upgrade with a redesign of MyChart, the rate fell to 11 percent. “We looked at how we could help patients find the notes and why they might be missing the prompts,” Sparling said. They made a few changes. First, after-visit summaries generate an e-mail urging patients to log in, a hyperlink directs them to their past appointments page, and once there, they see wording that says “Click on your clinical notes.”

“We re-labeled that tab to ‘clinical notes’ to be more obvious,” she said. The current rate or note opening sits between 22 and 24 percent, she added, noting that there are some wide variations between specialties, although there is no obvious explanation for the disparities.

The OpenNotes white paper spells out the steps the Vancouver Clinic took to improve their note-opening rates: 

• Quick Link within MyChart patient portal (labeled ‘View clinical notes shared by your provider’); 

• Text at top of Visit Summary section directs patients to click on Clinical Notes tab; 

• MyChart home page ‘News for You’ contains paragraph on notes and a hyperlink; 

• Notes are viewable on both the Visit Summary report and the Clinical Notes tab (with some exceptions); 

• Clinicians’ notes are shared by default (with a few exceptions); 

• Auto MyChart message sent to portal user when visit is closed: Message subject reads ‘New MyChart@TVC Visit Note’; the body of message contains navigation steps and hyperlink directing patients to Appointment and Visits page.

OpenNotes is in the early stages of working with clinicians, patient groups and EHR vendors to develop metrics around use of the portal and note-opening rates. It says the definition used by Epic is reasonable as a starting point (this definition applies to notes shared over any defined time frame): Numerator = Notes listed in denominator that are viewed by a patient portal user. Denominator = Signed notes from completed encounters written on a portal active patient (or patients activated within a month of the visit) that are shared to patient portal.