Does disclosure of medical records to patients influence medical care

UNLABELLED: Disclosure of medical records to patients has been assessed, but the influence of disclosure on medical care has not been well researched. To address this situation, this study was conducted to test three hypotheses: 1) doctors think that the disclosure can influence medical care, 2) whether doctors think disclosure can influence medical care depends on how they rank medical records (for example, as evidence for diagnosis and treatment, a process to reach a diagnosis, a tool to communicate with other medical staff, etc), and on whether they think medical record disclosure could change the content of the record. Questionnaires were sent to 881 doctors who work at two hospitals affiliated with N Medical School and K Medical University. RESULTS: Four hundred eighty-eight doctors responded. The findings related to the hypotheses were as follows: 1) Those who answered that the disclosure could have an influence on medical care were 49.1% of the total. 2) There was no relation between how doctors ranked medical records and whether they thought disclosure could influence medical care. 3) Doctors who answered that there were things that they would not be able to write if medical records were disclosed accounted for 73.5% of the total. These doctors answered "yes" significantly higher to the question that the disclosure could influence medical care than others (Odds 3.6, P < 0.01). Doctors who thought they would not be able to enter the diagnosis, the name of the disease for insurance, self-evaluation, information that could be judged and subjective information answered that disclosure could influence on medical care (P < 0.05). It was assumed that disclosure of medical records to patients could change the content of the medical records and that could influence medical care. How to deal with information will become an important issue if records are disclosed.