Patients’ Access to Their Psychiatric Notes: Current Policies and Practices in Sweden

Annika Bärkås, Isabella Scandurra, Hanife Rexhepi, Charlotte Blease, Åsa Cajander and Maria Hägglund
Additional contact information
Annika Bärkås: Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, SE-75237 Uppsala, Sweden
Isabella Scandurra: School of Business, Örebro University, SE-70182 Örebro, Sweden
Hanife Rexhepi: School of Informatics, Skövde University, SE-54128 Skövde, Sweden
Charlotte Blease: General Medicine and Primary Care, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Åsa Cajander: Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, SE-75105 Uppsala, Sweden
Maria Hägglund: Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, SE-75237 Uppsala, Sweden

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 17, 1-10

Abstract: Patients’ access to electronic health records (EHRs) is debated worldwide, and access to psychiatry records is even more criticized. There is a nationwide service in Sweden which offers all citizens the opportunity to read their EHR, including clinical notes. This study aims to explore Swedish national and local policy regulations regarding patients’ access to their psychiatric notes and describe to what extent patients currently are offered access to them. The rationale behind the study is that current policies and current practices may differ between the 21 self-governing regions, although there is a national regulation. We gathered web-based information from policy documents and regulations from each region’s website. We also conducted key stakeholder interviews with respondents from the regions and cross-regional private care providers, using a qualitative approach. The results show that 17 of 21 regions share psychiatric notes with patients, where forensic psychiatric care was the most excluded psychiatric care setting. All private care providers reported that they mainly follow the regions’ guidelines. Our findings show that regional differences concerning sharing psychiatric notes persist, despite Swedish regulations and a national policy that stipulates equal care for everyone. The differences, however, appear to have decreased over time, and we report evidence that the regions are moving toward increased transparency for psychiatry patients.

Keywords: mental health; psychiatry; psychiatric record; psychiatric notes; patient accessible electronic health record; PAEHR; open notes; policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/17/9140/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/17/9140/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:17:p:9140-:d:625262

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().