This week in Health Care Informatics I learned to be confused, but still try to act like I knew what I was doing. Just kidding, I set up a twitter and blog account. These are two things I never thought I would do. Setting up the accounts were easy, now the difficult task of using the sites starts. If anyone has any helpful advice, it would be welcomed.
One thing I learned about this week was about Electronics Health Records. I personally feel that once these systems can finally integrate information between two systems it will be extremely helpful. At the moment with my job I am using EPIC, and even though it may be frustrating at times I do think it is helpful. Having the ability to look at a patients up to date file does save time. The care giver does not have to search the paper chart for information about another care givers care. Notes are easy to sort through to learn what you are looking for. Lav values are easy to follow.
As for as who owns the health record, that can be difficult. Most health care providers don’t want to be responsible for anything more than they already are. I don’t know why the government would own the records, but they could probably come up with a reason for ownership. Insurance, even though they should have access when needed, does not need ownership. The patient should probably have ownership of their own records. Currently if a patient wants to view their record they have to go through the proper hoops to do so. As far as the computer system provider owning the records, I wouldn’t think they even want that title. I guess I would have to personally feel the patient is the owner of the records. Even though there are several keepers of health care records, the patient is ultimately the owner. These are their records, and have access to them, and are responsible to get them when changing providers.
In the future, EHR’s may be linked to each other, allowing care from one faculty and system to be accessed from another provider and systems. At this time, I would not think one would want to claim ownership of another’s records. So then it would fall onto the patient as well.
