PCHIT links for November 2nd through November 4th:

• Patient-Centered Care: What Does It Take? - New report from Commonwealth fund
• UI Design Newsletter, October - This year, world usability day is focused on health care
• Putting Patients First: Developing and Maintaining Patient-Centered Medical Practices - Brookings Institution - Just released report discussing patient experience in Washington, DC practices

This is a link to Kaiser Permanente’s press release about the relaunch of the site with My Health Manager. As the release states, the personal health record is continuing to be a large focus of Kaiser Permanente’s work in health information technology. All of Kaiser Permanente’s regions are now operating a personal health record as of this year now that Ohio is online.

Of interest, they are also going through and replacing “your” references to “my” references around the site. For the PCHIT initiative, we are following the progress of Kaiser Permanente as a benchmark organization, and they are a sponsoring partner.

One of my to-do’s is to schedule an in depth tour of kp.org. I am a user (and builder!) of Group Health’s PHR, which is based on similar technology. I know from my own physician and patient experience that more interaction like this is the right step forward for the people we serve.

Kaiser Permanente Puts Personal Health Record Front and Center

Massachusetts General, Beacon Hill Primary Care

Today was spent at two practices at within Massachusetts General primary care, part of Partners Health Care. Another new addition to the process was the fact that Jonathan Wald, MD, the Physician Lead for Partners’ Patient Gateway, also shadowed with us. I thought shadowing with both Josh and Jonathan was great. Both should be posting their experience here, so I will let them do that.

We actually started the day at the Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation, hosted by Susan Edgman-Levitan, PA, its Executive Director. Susan is a hero for patient-centered care in my (and many individuals’) eyes and kindly introduced us to some of the innovation in primary care that’s happening here. And it’s great to hear about innovation in primary care. I honestly had to do a soft reboot during our discussion because there’s more happening here than I could glean prior to our visit. So, we’re coming back for more, and this is why it’s good to come in the first place.

First, the pictures, and then a description of the practices. Click on any to see them full size:

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