With the widespread adoption of EHRs and advancement in health information exchange, health systems will more readily exchange medical information about their patients with others, and patients will have more opportunities to engage with clinical teams about their medical records. While the goal of these interactions is to improve continuity of care and patient safety, the environmental scan found patients with access to their medical information are likely to have questions, identify inaccuracies, or have information that may impact the data in their health records

NORC conducted an environmental scan to assess the current state of approaches used by health systems, electronic health developers and others to gather patient feedback on their medical records.  Following the environmental scan, the NORC team worked in partnership with Geisinger Health to design and develop a feedback form to gather patient inputs on their medication list.   The team then conducted a pilot implementation at Geisinger Health System. In this pilot, current personal health record (PHR) users were sent a structured feedback form to identify and resolve problems with their medication list between office visits. The patients submitted updates through the portal, which were analyzed and adjudicated by pharmacists.

Findings from the Geisinger pilot demonstrate that patients can be effectively engaged online to improve the accuracy of the information stored in their EHRs. It has provided valuable insights into effective strategies to gather patient feedback, to organize the back-end workflow and processing of patient feedback. Furthermore, the data shows that patients are eager to provide feedback and the information they provide is likely to result in more accurate and up-to-date information.