Toward Cambia’s goal of creating simple and personalized health experiences for people, Cambia Health Foundation is funding OpenNotes. Doctors invite patients to review the notes made following an office visit, a simple idea with significant impact designed to provide fully transparent medical records and enhance communication and engagement among patients, their families, and those who care for them.

OpenNotes is a movement to change practice and culture, not a software package. When facilitated by new capacities in digital and electronic health tools, such as personalized apps and patient portals, OpenNotes will empower 50 million patients to access their medical notes by 2020.

To bring OpenNotes to scale nationwide, regional efforts will prove critical, and many will be spawned and facilitated through philanthropic investments. As leaders in this effort, Cambia Health Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Peterson Center on Healthcare, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation jointly are providing $10 million in new funding over the next three years.

OpenNotes is already seeing exciting movement in communities served by Cambia:
 

• In Oregon, a group of providers and health systems that compete in some spaces have come together to make OpenNotes a standard of care.
• In Washington, a team based at Harborview Medical Center is using participatory research methods to answer some key questions: How might we best engage consumers in such a movement? How can research and evaluation contribute to spread of a disruptive change in practice? To what degree does OpenNotes increase health literacy, patient safety and equity? The OpenNotes team recently joined disruptive forces with the team at Cambia Grove to explore partnerships. 
• The University of Utah has started a small demonstration with an eye toward system-wide adoption. The University is exploring how OpenNotes could increase patient engagement while also improving communication between collaborative provider groups.
• In Idaho, a small group of thought leaders recently convened to discuss how OpenNotes could take hold in Idaho. Scott Kreiling, Cambia Health Foundation board member, joined this discussion and noted, “Each community and health system across the country is different in how they are embracing and adopting the OpenNotes movement. We are supporting efforts here in Idaho to determine strategies that will yield the best results for patients and consumers.”

Find research studies, toolkits and informational videos at http://www.opennotes.org/ and receive updates by following OpenNotes on Twitter @myopennotes.  And check out this powerful trailer to a video produced by Red Hat Films, which features OpenNotes as an example of how opening medical records can change people's lives: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-NtFRj74Qk