Case Report: A health system's experience using clinical decision support to promote note sharing after the 21st Century Cures Act.

Abstract

Objective: We used clinical decision support (CDS) to promote compliance with the 21st Century Cures Act's mandate that, with few exceptions, patients be granted timely access to their clinical notes.

Materials and methods: We conducted an observational analysis of note sharing rates in a large regional health system from February 2, 2021 to October 3, 2023. Throughout the study period, notes were shared with patients by default with the option not to grant note access; starting week 10, clinicians not sharing notes were presented with "hard-stop" CDS requiring selection of an allowable exception reason. Trends were examined with forward step-segmented linear regression.

Results: 0.7% of all notes were unshared; rates of unshared notes were highest in pediatrics (4.9%) and psychiatry (2.2%). Rates dropped substantially following hard-stop CDS introduction (downward step of 0.96%; 95% CI -1.17 to -0.024). Despite high portal access (72.6%), few notes were viewed by patients/proxies (17.0%).

Discussion: We found very low overall rates of unshared notes; the significant drop in the rates of unshared notes following the introduction of hard-stop CDS is consistent with prior research showing that hard-stop CDS can be an effective tool. The higher rates of unshared notes in pediatrics and psychiatry likely reflect considerations around sensitive information that are inherent to these fields.

Conclusions: CDS effectively promoted note sharing, but patient engagement remained low.