This Blue Button Project just keeps getting more and more interesting.
To begin with, the VA announced this week that patients will now be able to access their progress notes through the MyHealtheVet portal. This is an impressive leap forward for a big institution. Of course, you know me, even though I’m no longer at the VA I still think about the implications for my elderly patients and I have a few qualms, which are posted over at the The Health Care Blog for those who are interested (Six Awkward Concerns in My (Not-Yet) OpenNotes).
So now I’m wondering if the Blue Button Redesign will be incorporating progress notes too. I certainly hope someone creates a user interface in which patients can keep their progress notes and then show them to other clinicians (like me!), and maybe annotate them with their questions.
Then today I discovered this fascinating Blue Button Implementation Guide, which lists the sections that should be included when a patient health record is generated (“if they exist in the dataholder’s system”).
Hold on to your hats, geriatricians.
“Functional and Cognitive Status” is on the list!
Am I the only geriatrician who didn’t know this? Doesn’t matter. I did a little dance of joy when I read this, then I fell to my knees and bellowed “praise the innovators!”
Then I thought wait a minute. Which EMRs are capturing functional and cognitive status in their structured data fields? And who is entering the data, and based on what information?
I’ll try to find out more about this in the coming weeks, as it’s interesting to think about how to systematically — and accurately — capture this very important data.
In the meantime, I would love LOVE to hear from anyone who’s working with an EMR that currently captures this data. I imagine PACE programs such as OnLok are doing it, but whom else?
