Where There Is No Doctor’s Medical Record
An intern I was working with mentioned that he had a friend doing an elective in Africa, and that there, without the medical infrastructure, there’s no such thing as a doctor or hospital that keeps track of a patient’s medical record.
The patient must keep track his or her own medical record; otherwise, the patient is assumed to be a new patient, with no medical history whatsoever.
Not saying we should switch to this system, but I think it’s just an interesting thought experiment to how it might change the healthcare system–patients would likely be forced to know more about their own medical conditions, which I think would be A Good Thing; currently it’s not uncommon to have a patient come in with 20 different medications, and they have no idea which pill is for what, or don’t even know what their diagnoses even mean.
Thought: Weird that many people get all active and knowledgeable and support groupy when they have a diagnosis of Cancer, but not when they have a diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease, Congestive Heart Failure, or something else more/equally deadly. (Or maybe that’s just a false notion, but it sure seems like it.)
i’m waiting for google to googlize our medical records. within a couple of years we’ll start seeing something, i’m sure.
should make the fbi happy.
As a privacy nut, I forbid my doctors to keep my records–and always take them with me. Some doctors don’t like this, but I usually just give them a few $100 bills and their objections evaporate.
Why should I allow the medical blob to have my record. Yeah, HIPAA keeps them private, except from the government, insurance companies, marketers, and other doctors.
Interesting debate about medical records, for someone who’s making a career out of dealing with them. Reading the previous comments, what we need is something in between these two extremes: not Googlized, where everyone and his brother will be able to access anyone’s medical information, but not so extreme that no one can access your records, either. For the “privacy nut” above: insurance companies use medical information in order to determine payment, so, no information, no payment on your claim. Doctors involved in your care also have good reason to be inside your medical record(s); marketers and the government, well, that’s another story entirely. There’s no reason either of those groups should have access to your medical records. The one exception is if it’s the government (rather than private insurance) that’s paying for your care.
Googlizing medical records is, IMHO, a form of TMI…nothing good would come out of making the contents of medical records public information. Perhaps the point should be that the line between public and private is currently poorly drawn, and some of the responsibility for this should be shared by several people, e.g., healthcare providers, patients, and insurance carriers. Getting to know the contents of your medical records as a patient could be a helpful thing (although physicians might not see it that way); gaining access to others’ medical records is probably NOT a good thing.
Well, medrecordsgal, I hope you go out of business. The BEST solution is simply for patients to have their records on some server somewhere and have complete control of who can access it.
I disagree with most of what you said. Doctors do not need to see my records unless I think it is a good idea. In fact, given my interactions with numerous doctors, I do not WANT them to see my records.
Insurance companies seeing your records? It is not necessary. They are using the information to pry into peoples lives, demanding ever more intrusive measures (monitoring compliance, etc.). This is a problem and a reason for 1. mandating the insurance companies offer (for a hirer premium) a policy in which records are kept private or 2. encouraging HSA to get insurance companies out of our lives.
Unfortunately those patients in Africa like their counterparts here also come in with 20 different medications and have no clue as to what they are taking the medications for. The “bukana” system, at least as I experienced it in Lesotho, is a medical and logistical nightmare.
As a twenty five year practicing physician I can state, the current push for computerized medical recods is an insurance industry attempt to limit care and harvest patient info leading to increasing sales of insurance and pharmacy products and has little to do with patient care. Second, all this data harvesting and computerized record keeping allows anyone with even little computer hacking experience to gain access to your personal health info.