Patient Health Care Records

A Historic Announcement for Patient Healthcare Records

The Department of Health and Human Services made a historic announcement about patient healthcare records on 16^th July 2010.

Enforcement of the use of electronic healthcare record systems will be enforced by 2014. This may bring some additional peace of mind to the wearers of medical alert jewelery, as these new electronic records will be portable between different healthcare providers and fully accessible by first responders.

This crucial piece of legislation will ensure, amongst other things, that patients active list of medication; past health problems; and their causes are available to whoever needs to access the data especially in the case of an emergency.

This is an enormous step forwards, which hopes to breach the many gaps and disconnects in the current system. It brings the patient to the forefront of the healthcare system where a seamless service can be provided no matter which provider you chose. At the moment it is envisaged that there will be a phased approach to the implementation with medical providers being incentivised to comply with the requirements.

There are of course concerns over the nature of the data being held together with the security surrounding who can access your data.  Transfer of the data is only going to be permitted over encrypted internet connections and the data itself will also be encrypted.

There is a requirement for full audit trails for accessing and changing the data. The systems must record who accesses the data, when they access it, what they access and any changes that they might make to it. This should alleviate most concerns over the handling of such sensitive data. Patients will also have the right to be provided with details of all information held on them.

For more information:

CNS News

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Blogs:

Advancing the Future of Health Care with Electronic Health Records