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Senate Bill Calls For Open Source Electronic Health Records
An anonymous reader optimistically writes that new legislation has been introduced in the Senate that would call for a nationwide adoption of electronic health records built on open source. The bill does not seek to supplant proprietary alternatives, but instead to either augment or offer a cost effective alternative. "'We need advancements in health information technology across the board to improve the quality of care Americans receive,' said Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care. 'To make this happen, we need universal access to affordable and interoperable health information technology — from small, rural health clinics to large, urban hospitals.'"
Dude, I hear where you're coming from but I just for the life of me can't believe anyone wants to trust their health history to the tender mercies of computers and the internet--the same entities that routinely reveal hundreds, sometimes thousands of people's IDs, credit card and bank info for days or weeks at a time to passing thieves.
And can you imagine what it will be like to correct inaccuracies??? We've all been to that movie with banks, utilities, etc. and it's a total nightmare. Imagine if your medical treatment rested upon timely resolution of computer errors. Good luck with that.
I am a survivor of serious medical malpractice. I can assure you doctors lie--and lie very convincingly--to protect one another's butts, not just on the witness stand but on medical records that follow you for the rest of your life.
I am deadset against computerized medical records. My information has been computerized against my will and without my permission and is shared, again against my will and without my permission, with every doctor and their office staff in the vast network owned by our local hospital. In this day of HIPPA I, ironically, have no privacy anymore about what I choose to share with my doctor--it's shared for me, the wheat and chaff alike. I start out any relationship with medical personnel behind the eight ball--all without my permission or control.
I no longer tell my doctor anything except the bare necessity of what he needs to know to treat my current ailment. My doctor is nothing but a conduit for information to my insurer, whose only desire is to deny me care, and the hospital network which nearly killed me and then smeared me with lies. My doc is a very nice person but I can no longer trust him, thanks to computerized records over which I have no control. I avoid medical care whenever possible because I value my privacy. At any rate, my medical care is now hopelessly compromised by the inaccuracies on my records.
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Why not use the one our tax dollars have already developed? VistA is the VA's EHR system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Health_Information_Systems_and_Technology_Architecture
Your medical records should be PRIVATE.
Even if they now store your data in 'free software' it still means you are now less free.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I used to work as an outsourced IT support guy, and a lot of my customers with medical offices. A lot of them used EMR systems, and a lot of them were all proprietary, clunky, full of bugs and issues, and just general pains in my ass. Now, a system that forces uniform standards, would allow, for data to be easily transfered from a PCP to a specialist. However, the mere thought of implementing any of this, makes me very glad I'm no longer in that job as it would be an absolute nightmare.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
If it really belongs to the patient, the patient should be able to tell others to purge his records, so it will not follow him for life if he so chooses.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Nothing in the summary provided in TFA of this bill suggests it does anything to increase healthcare providesr access to "anyone and everyone's" records. What it does to is provide funding to cover provider costs of converting to use electronic (as opposed to paper) records systems, and seeks to make those systems interoperable with eachother and with billing systems, so that in the circumstances where information sharing is allowed (and, often, necessary) it now can be acheived at lower long-term costs and with greater accuracy. And, perhaps as importantly, even when sharing between providers isn't the issue, the accuracy and completeness of the records readily at hand to physicians during the course of treatment within, say, a single hospital will be improved, preventing avoidable errors.
Insurers, rather than providers, tend to be the ones that do that.
This is one of the key things me and my local linux user group recommended.
http://www.healthreform.gov/communityreports/new_jersey/new_jersey_08002.html
Contact Your Senator and show your support!
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Our summary was:
* create/maintain/update a fully free and open source electronic health record system
* mandate their electronic health record system to be taught in medical and nursing schools
* mandate an open and freely implementable patient record communication standard
* mandate a national medical identification number and prohibit the use of and storage of Social Security Numbers in any health care system
"You won't get to decide what treatments you are eligible for"
And this differs from the current private insurance system in what way?
This is why its important to have a doctor that you know you can trust.
I don't normally post anonymously, but, I work at a company doing electronic medical records now. This could be interesting for us. Though, we are a non-profit thats funded by a number of hospitals, so maybe not. Who knows, maybe it means we can start replacing all the VB programmers :)
Anyway, my doctor leaves stuff about drug abuse out of my records. I don't even have to ask, we talked about it, he has said to me "I am going to leave this out of the records". I trust the man, I like him. Because of that, I don't hold back when I am in his office, and he, in turn, gives me the best care possible.
If you can't trust your doctor to have discretion, then find a new doctor. The case that you describe is definitely a concern and a good doctor should at least have some pause and ask you some questions to be sure, but... your right, it shouldn't stop him (especially since addiction is an acceptable side effect to medication).
Also... in all this... remember HIPPA. Medical records are already protected privacy wise. Mention HIPPA inside a hospital and see if anyone doesn't know what you mean. Hell... its the ONLY thing I have seen thats managed to get real movement on some things (like data encryption, password policies, etc). How many places do you know that mandate all employee laptops must have encrypted hard drives? Nobody wants HIPPA auditors on their case.
Its so strange to see a place go from assigned 5 character passwords that can't be changed (a legacy issue from an older system thats was in place for more than a decade), to mandatory regular password changes with a strong password policy and mandatory laptop encryption in under 3 years. Yay HIPPA, as someone who is "also a client", I love to know I am protected.
-A professional in medical IT and a pothead