Friday, October 30, 2009

Your Medical Records Belong To You

I've been engaging a lot recently with the notion of an electronic health record. For those of you who don't know, this is usually an online version of collated data to do with your health. Simply - your pathology, your doc notes, all the hospital visits, illnesses and drug usage are kept in one secure place. You can access it and most of the time, so can a healthcare provider.

For those of you that are not in tune with the medical world - this is something you have to know about as it is the backbone of the Obama administration. By having an electronic health record, there is a saving on administration as well as all the good things a centralised database brings. eg. Less duplication of tests and better management of healthcare.

Discovery Health in South Africa is launching one next year. It'll be interesting to see how the "population" engages with it.

This blog is very interesting in that it clearly outlines the fact that your medical records belong to YOU. Many people are under the misconception that your doctor owns your medical records - and that the only way to access them is via that doctor. This is not true. Your health. Your body. Your money spent to purchase medication/tests etc.

It belongs to you.

3 comments:

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Anonymous said...

You can close your eyes and wish it were so, but case law has shown time and again that medical records belong to the doctor who recorded them, not to the patient.

Google it...

James said...

Yes, electronic health records do make it easy for the hospital administration to organize, and to locate files by just tapping records on the database. These electronic medical records also save the prescriptions made, last visit or hospitalization, operations done and health history. With these capabilities of practice management software, supervising patient's health would be easy and would eliminate unnecessary tests and examinations.