DE-PAEHR

Patients’ Active Role in Managing Inaccuracies in Medical Records (DE-PAEHR)

"To err is human"

The purpose of this project is to explore how patients' access to their medical records via 1177.se can be used to identify and manage inaccuracies in documentation, which could potentially lead to harm.

Patients often find inaccuracies or missing information in their medical records, but few choose to raise this with their healthcare providers. We aim to make it easier for patients to take an active role in patient safety efforts without increasing the burden on healthcare personnel.

We have three goals for our project:

Goal 1: Patients’ Input - Yesterday
Analysis of how the previous feature, ‘patient’s notes’, was used by Swedish patients to report inaccuracies in their medical records during the period from 2013 to 2021. In collaboration with Inera AB, we plan to analyze usage statistics for this function and conduct a qualitative analysis of the actual notes written by patients.

Goal 2: Patients’ Input - Today
To explore Swedish patients' and healthcare professionals' views on and preferences regarding how patients could contribute to identifying inaccuracies in their medical records. This goal will be achieved through a national survey via 1177.se, which can be answered by both patients and healthcare staff.

Goal 3: Patients’ Input - Tomorrow
To understand how patient portals can be used to securely and efficiently triage inaccuracies identified by patients in their medical records and address these in a way that does not increase the burden on healthcare personnel.

By gaining insight into how patients have previously used the comment function in their records and how patients and healthcare professionals view the potential in the future, we will propose an innovative framework for how patient portals can be further developed to enable patients to actively contribute to the quality of documentation.

A Delphi study will be conducted, where focus groups will lay the foundation for a series of surveys with experts from various stakeholder groups.

The project is funded by VR, the Swedish Research Council.
Project period: January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2025

PI: Maria Hägglund
Project Participants: Charlotte Blease, Anna Kharko