Today's Globe: opening physicians' notes, swine flu, doctors' calling

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is about to begin a project called “open notes’’ in which about 100 doctors at the hospital and two other sites will allow 25,000 to 35,000 patients to read their physicians’ notes for a year as part of their online medical record.

Health officials in Beijing are monitoring three Shrewsbury students and one chaperone as a precaution after one student showed signs of the H1N1 virus while on a school trip to China.

At least 81 US healthcare workers have contracted laboratory-confirmed cases of the H1N1 influenza virus, and about half caught the bug on the job, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday.

A cruise ship that was turned away from two Caribbean ports because of a swine flu outbreak headed back to its home base of Aruba yesterday after dropping off some of its passengers in Venezuela.

"Somewhere along the way, with the help of insurers and incentives, by paying for procedures rather than patient care, we have created a culture of medicine that pushes doctors away from the 'calling,' ’’ columnist Ellen Goodman writes on the opinion page.