Are Your Notes Ready for Patient Scrutiny?
Starting Nov. 2, all patients in the United States will have immediate access to clinical notes and thus will be able to read their doctors’ writings.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) Cures Act Final Rule (Cures Rule) is the biggest health care law you have never heard of. The final rule published in the Federal Register mandated that starting Nov. 2, all patients in the United States will have immediate access to clinical notes and thus will be able to read their doctors’ writings, as well as test results and reports from pathology and imaging.
The 21st Century Cures Act mandates that patients have fast, electronic access to the following types of notes: consultations, discharge summaries, history, physical examination findings, imaging narratives, laboratory and pathology report narratives, and procedure and progress notes.
The law means that inpatient and outpatient notes will be released immediately and that patients will have immediate access to testing and imaging results, including results from sexually transmitted disease tests, Pap tests, cancer biopsies, CT and PET scans, fetal ultrasounds, pneumonia cultures, and mammograms. For the full summary, read here: www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/selected-amendments-fdc-act/21st-century-cures-act
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21st Century Cures Act

www.fda.gov

Description of the 21st Century Cures Act, signed into law on Dec. 13, 2016.

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