This popped up last week:
Having Access To Medical Records Is Useless For Most Patients
June 7, 2019
I knew up front that it would be ugly. After two years of treatment, a chronically-ill patient like me generates a lot of records, and I had every reason to expect that they would be disorganized and dense.
Still, when I sat down to tackle the 600-odd PDF that Kaiser Permanente made available, I was pretty intimidated. Yeah, when I say this I can almost hear you thinking “well, duh!” but your warnings couldn’t prepare me emotionally for the document that I got.
In any event, this encounter with my personal data has convinced me that if CMS doesn’t change its strategy, pushing consumer engagement with their online medical record will prove to be a complete waste of time.
Actually, getting my records was actually amazingly easy. I logged into my Kaiser portal and navigated little difficulty to a link I could use to request records for the past two years of treatment. Having been a patient with Kaiser for just over two years this was perfect,
Within 24 hours, Kaiser has sent me a link to the FTP site for which I could download my records, and creating a login for the FTP server was simple. I logged in, clicked to fetch the PDF and voila, there it was. As an aside, this was a stunning exception to Kaiser’s usual foot-dragging and bureaucratic bluster, and my guess is that their Epic system deserves at least some of the credit.
In any event, you’ll be far from surprised to learn that from that point on, things got a little crazy.
First, it was the predictable but unfortunate fact that the document was 643 pages long and completely chaotic. Visit records from various providers were displayed in random order, with encounter information from say, May 2017 followed by documentation from November 2019 then August 2018.
Updates from my primary care doctor were followed by nursing notes from urgent visits, then records from podiatry consults the year earlier. There were pages and pages of repetitive blood pressure readings.
More here:
Of course as the #myHR for each patient gradually fills up the threat of a 600 page document will become moot – even if it were actually possible to download the whole record- let alone in any organized form.
For most people it will be impossible to make much sense of what they receive as so much will be disorganized, technical and hardly informative!
This article provides more evidence I reckon as to just how few will find much benefit from the system for the enormous amount we a paying for it. What proportion of the population do you think will actually receive real value from the #myHR and is that enough to justify the system?
David.
Patients cannot download their health record. It's not designed for patients to do that.
ReplyDeleteBut it's called My Health Record?
Patients do not pay for My Health Record and they get exactly what they pay. The old saying is quite true. If you don't pay for a product, you are the product.
That's bulls--t. Patients and the rest of the community have paid more than $2 billion. That's at least $100 per individual.
ReplyDelete@June 20, 2019 11:11 AM
ReplyDeleteEr, where have you been for the entire debate?
Of course patients are supposed to have online access to their entire health record... that's why they changed the name to MY-HR. Leaving aside that it's very difficult, clunky and generally without any useful content, our political masters have decreed it to be so
As per: Online access is the simplest way to access your My Health Record and update your information at any time from a computer or mobile device.
With online access you can:
View and manage your health information
Add health information, such as allergies and medications you are taking
Set privacy and security controls
See who has previously accessed your record
Hide or remove documents you don’t want people to see
https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/for-you-your-family/howtos/log-in
I'm not sure if you print stuff out, but everything is available to be downloaded by any kind of health provider from your dentist to podiatrist so I guess you can download your own records as well
> I guess you can download your own records as well
ReplyDeleteNot so. you can see the documents rendered to html, and print them. but you can't actually access the documents, to have them, or to get access to the data inside them. In fact, the one app that offered consumers the option to do that was kicked off the system for that reason.
You, the consumer, cannot get the documents from Your 'MyHR'. Heaven help you do something useful with your own records on your own.
There's a theme running through all this. The Australian Government seems keen to share our data but not theirs.
ReplyDeleteThe last published myhr dashboard is dated 28 April . It used to be published, mostly, weekly.
Today there's this:
"Feds’ dashboard starved of data
The federal government’s digital dashboard is still struggling with missing data and tardy reporting from departments two and a half years after it was launched.
The Digital Transformation Agency unveiled the Performance Dashboard in late 2016 in an effort to promote “government transparency and help drive the ongoing improvement of government services”."
https://www.innovationaus.com/2019/06/Feds-dashboard-starved-of-data
The ADHA has been less than spectacular in the way it shares its board papers,
The ADHA's transition to opt-out project fell right in the middle of the two and a half years the dashboard has been live.
Australia's likeness for secrecy not going unnoticed in the rest of the world.
The New York Times published this on 5 June:
"Australia May Well Be the World’s Most Secretive Democracy
But even among its peers, Australia stands out. No other developed democracy holds as tight to its secrets, experts say, and the raids (on the ABC) are just the latest example of how far the country’s conservative government will go to scare officials and reporters into submission."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/world/australia/journalist-raids.html
The ADHA seems to be following the lead of the big boys. The ADHA probably feels right at home, all safe and secure.
Would appear the new board is a collection of placebos. Most likely the appointments were a reward for shutting up.
ReplyDeleteOh dear. But it is only America. we do things differently here.
ReplyDeleteDoctors increasingly use PDMPs, but opioid impact still rising
Despite the fact that physician use of prescription drug monitoring programs has dramatically increased, the use of these state-run databases isn’t curtailing the opioid crisis.
That’s the sobering reality according to Susan Bailey, MD, president-elect of the American Medical Association.
https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/doctors-increasingly-use-pdmps-but-opioid-impact-still-rising