The Newbury Maternity Care Study: a randomized controlled trial to assess a policy of women holding their own obstetric records

Abstract

To assess a policy of women holding and thus having constant access to their own obstetric records, 290 women attending a peripheral consultant clinic in Newbury, West Berkshire. were randomly allocated to hold either their full case notes, or the more usual co-operation card. Women holding their full records were significantly more likely to feel in control of their antenatal care (rate ratio 1.45; 95% confidence interval 1.08-1.95) and to feel it was easier to talk to doctors and midwives (rate ratio 1.73; 95% confidence interval 1-1&2-59). No other beneficial effects were detected. Asked about their preferences for any subsequent pregnancies, women holding their own records in the index pregnancy were more likely to say they would prefer to hold the same kind of record again in a subsequent pregnancy than were women holding a co-operation card (rate ratio 1.56; 95% confidence interval 1.34-1.81). There was no evidence of negative effects. In particular, women holding their case notes did not feel more anxious than co-operation card holders. The policy of women holding their notes resulted in savings in clerical time, without evidence of an increase in the rate of lost notes.The present system of shared maternity care in the United Kingdom is characterized by multiple contacts between women and a variety of staff. This situation has spawned a number of parallel medical records systems. At a minimum these include those of hospital staff, the woman's general practitioner and the community midwife. This duplication may be wasteful of scarce

Empowering patients undergoing in vitro fertilization by providing Internet access to medical data

“…Concerning overall patient satisfaction, our results are in line with those of previous studies, where paper-based reco rds were mad e availabl e to the patient s (21,(38)(39)(40) . In one electronic personal health record intervention study, however, the investigators observed a trend toward an improvement in satisfaction regarding the physician-patient relationship (37).…”

“…self-efficacy (38,39). Moreover, the insignificant increase in knowledge was also found by others (38,40,41), whereas yet other studies demonstrated significant improvements in recall and understanding (21,42,43).…”

Information exchange among physicians caring for the same patient in the community

“…Other potential solutions include personalized health records. [24][25][26][27] We believe that centralized health information systems could have the greatest benefit for information transmission.…”

The use of an electronic health record (EHR) in a maternity shared-care environment

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