Digital Health Records a Reality

Posted by AMS at 5 JUL 8:39 am Share

Katie Abramson carries her medical records wherever she goes in a thumb drive, while Mary Ann Peugeot can pull up her family’s health files simply by typing in a password.

The Nashville women are early adopters of what could become the norm. Beginning Sunday, hospitals nationwide must start demonstrating how they use electronic health records in order to qualify for federal incentive money to completely switch from paper. Physician practices will follow suit in October.

The conversion gives patients the opportunity to take the helm in health decisions without having to lug around boxes of records. Patients save money when tests aren’t needlessly duplicated. They can more easily change doctors. And they have the information to know what to tell and ask medical providers.

Abramson was trapped in a spinning circle of repetitive tests and misdiagnoses from doctors when she took action.

“One of them said it was inner ear,” she said. “The ear doctor said, ‘No, it’s not. It’s neurological.’ I was getting really frustrated. I was having to repeat the same story over and over and over again. Some of them were wanting to test over and over. Then it gets to where they think it is all in your head.”

A test for multiple sclerosis turned out negative, but another doctor looking at the same test results determined that Abramson had chronic aseptic meningitis.

Peugeot accesses her records through a portal on her health provider’s website.

“I had my physical last Monday,” she said. “By the time I got home, my lab results were posted. Honestly, within 30 minutes after that, I had an electronic message from my doctor saying that one of my numbers was out of range.”

The push by the federal government toward electronic health records, or EHR, is intended to lower costs by reducing medical errors and redundant tests. It will also give emergency-room doctors instant access to vital information.

Middle Tennessee eHealth Connect, a consortium of the region’s hospitals, will allow them to begin exchanging records as early as this fall. Hospitals under the same ownership umbrella already have such systems in place.

Source: www.tennessean.com