I’ve been thinking about the important role activism plays in shaping our health care system.  From quality and safety to improved access to care and priorities for research funding, patient activists play a key role challenging the health care status quo. Patient activists focused on healthcare transparency have helped to advance the spread of OpenNotes at individual organizations and nationally. This video highlights a few of these amazing people talking about what notes are, why they read them and how OpenNotes helps them to make healthcare decisions.  Please feel free to share it! 
OpenNotes at the Salzburg Global Seminar
Tom and Jan have returned from a Salzburg Global Seminar where they participated with patients and clinicians from around the world in Session 553 - Toward a Shared Culture of Health: Enriching and Charting the Patient-Clinician Relationship. They assure us there will be much to share, and to give you an idea of the good things to come, please enjoy this British Medical Journal blog post written by a conference attendee: Jemma Batte: The positive power of transparency
The Mayo Clinic Helps Patients Find Their Notes

Julie Prigge, Mayo Clinic’s Operations Manager for Connected Care shared this image with us. It appears when patients log in to the portal. At the Mayo Rochester location, notes are now the number one item patients access in the their online medical record.
Request for Proposal
Recognizing that health systems might need a nudge to implement OpenNotes, the New York State Health Foundation will be awarding up to ten hospitals $100,000 each to support implementation. You can read more about the Request for Proposal here –  Upcoming NYSHealth Funding Opportunity: Spreading OpenNotes in New York State
New to the OpenNotes Community:
We’re very happy to welcome our colleagues from the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) to the OpenNotes community. Led by neurosurgeon Dr. Louis Harkey, UMMC started sharing notes with patients in November of 2016. He says, "This creates a collaborative relationship between the patient and provider.” 
“It's definitely a culture shift for us, that's for sure,” adds Dr. Shannon Pittman, professor of family medicine and director of the Family Medicine Residency Program. “But it will create lots of opportunity to adopt the culture of 'The information in the record is the patient's information.'”  Read more here .

We’re also excited to hear from Fort Healthcare CIO, LeBebe Nickell, that patients, including adolescents, in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin can now access their notes online.

Providence Health and Services has expanded access to notes across their whole system. Nearly a million patients in Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, and Alaska can now read their notes.

And kudos to Kaiser Permanente Northwest for expanding to include mental health notes!
Tools & Resources

Implementing OpenNotes. The OpenNotes website includes updated and expanded resources for patients and health systems. Take a look at the Implementation toolkit for information about gaining support for OpenNotes at your institution, preparing for implementation, and getting the most out of note sharing once you’re up and running.
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