Seinfeld and the Move Towards Patient Engagement

Today's Wall St. Journal has an article on patient access to physician notes. It reminded me of a sketch from Seinfeld from several years ago, where Elaine is trying to get a hold of her medical charts because she thinks the physician's notes are not fair to her. Turns out, you can legally request physician notes and some hospitals like Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston are piloting a program to make such data more accessible.

In case you haven't heard enough about Meaningful Use this week, I'll just add one more insightful analysis: John D. Halamka believes that patient engagement is actually one of the more challenging aspects of Meaningful Use Stage 1.

Step 1 in the path towards patient-centric healthcare. Clip from Seinfeld included below.