Patients to get a look at physicians' notes

Beth Israel study tests online access
By Liz Kowalczyk
Globe Staff / June 19, 2009

One doctor wrote that a patient was acting paranoid. Another typed that she had ordered tests to make sure a patient didn’t have cancer. Such notes, written in a patient’s medical records after an appointment, can be candid and blunt - at times more so than doctors are to patients face-to-face.

Doctors write these one- to two-page comments after every visit, and other physicians who treat the patient read them, too. But the notes usually aren’t readily available to patients because hospitals and doctors’ groups fear that they will misunderstand medical jargon, take offense at a blunt observation, or worry unnecessarily about a precautionary test. the rest