Somehow, I’d missed that all this talk about electronic medical records included a MANDATE that they be centralized by the Federal Government [emphasis mine]:
The law specifically says that this “means an electronic record of health-related information on an individual that — (A) includes patient demographic and clinical health information, such as medical history and problems lists; and (B) has the capacity — (i) to provide clinical decision support; (ii) to support physician order entry; (iii) to capture and query information relevant to health care quality; and (iv) to exchange electronic health information with, and integrate such information from other sources.”
These records–including a person’s “medical history and problems list”–must be put into a national system that allows for “the electronic linkage of health care providers, health plans, the government and other interested parties to enable electronic exchange and use of health information among all the components in the health care infrastructure in accordance with applicable law,” says the law.
I wonder who qualifies as an “other interested party”.
Oh, but not to worry. STD’s won’t have to go into the database, at least according to Patches. Which is smart, because communicable diseases are the one thing that ought to be kept secret, right?
Tags: Electronic Medical Records, Patches Kennedy, Privacy
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2 Responses to “CENTRALIZED Medical Records???”
September 29th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Already sounds like a violation of HIPAA. I do believe we shalll be battling that into the ground. Medical records are between the patient and the doctor and other personell providing treatment. They are available for review to administrators but only in the form of statistics. JCAHO and the State Boards are allowed limited access and that, too, is to check for basic standards of care and documentation review, not for any other reason.
Medical records on a microchipped health card would be a handy thing for patients and practitioners unfamiliar to patients when it comes to treating. But that’s about it. We should not be turning over all our information for everyone to see. And if that’s the road they want to drag us down, I’m going to run to the head of the line and demand to see each and every single elected officials’ most personal records. I’d like to know about the hemorrhoids and fistulae, the chlamydia and other STD testings, the removal of the carrot that slid too far up into the intestines. Yes, make the playing field level and see how quickly this changes their perspective. Or at least how quickly they can shred and burn the embarrassing volumes.
Nurses and doctors will fight this. Patients better fight it, too. BIG TIME!
September 29th, 2009 at 11:56 am
The sheer enormity of centralizing records is staggering, too. At least if you want them secure yet accessible yada yada. It’s been a slog computerizing and attempting to go semi-paperless at the major medical practice where our primary is chief of medicine. (It’s fun telling people far and wide who he is and they’ve always heard of him.) I got a bit of extra insight into the process, because the doctor knows my geek background and interest in it. For that matter, the similarity to the near impossible task of making the law firm I worked for crawl toward being “paperless.”
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