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Man Charged £2,000 For Medical Records Stored On Obsolete System

Posted by Soulskill on from the boy-that-costs-a-ton dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In Britain, where it is custom and practice to charge around £10 for a copy of your medical results, a patient has discovered that his copy will cost him £2,000 because the records are stored on an obsolete system that the current IT systems cannot access. Can this be good for patient care if no-one can access records dating back from a previous filing system? Perhaps we need to require all current systems to store data in a way that is vendor independent, and DRM-free, too?"

8 of 368 comments (clear)

  1. What a fuckup by nighthawk243 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who the hell decided to not do the format conversion when they phased out the old system?

    1. Re:What a fuckup by geekoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Accountants.
      At least, if it's like any other large conversion I have been through.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    2. Re:What a fuckup by tompaulco · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd take Britain's system over here in the US where paramedics check to see if you have a valid insurance card before they check your pulse
      Saying a thing doesn't make it true.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    3. Re:What a fuckup by Pieroxy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd take Britain's system over here in the US where paramedics check to see if you have a valid insurance card before they check your pulse

      Saying a thing doesn't make it true.

      I've been in the Stanford Hospital ER when my wife delivered.

      I say a mother and her son walk in, the boy was literally covered in blood and dripping blood rapidly. They were promptly taken to the secretary where the boy had to wait patiently for the mother to validate health insurance with the nice lady on the other side of the desk.

      Then, the hospital lady looked somewhere behind her and made a sign. The paramedics rushed in with a stretcher, got the boy and took care of him. Some cleaning dude came in almost instantly after to mop the blood.

      I'm still wondering to this day what would have happened if the mother would have forgotten her insurance papers or anything else. Would they have let the boy die in there? Probably not, but I suspect that it would have been because of the bad PR this could have generated, nothing else.

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
  2. Why should the patient have to pay? by ZorinLynx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why should the patient have to pay 200 times as much money to access records when the difficulty isn't his fault?

    The company that was incompetent and stored things in an inefficient manner should cover the cost. Charging this incompetence to the patient shouldn't be legal.

  3. An inspiring new way to raise funds! by InvisibleClergy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So instead of having migration costs, just charge your customers for your migration! Think about it - if you go to the bank, the teller tells you that it will cost you $2,000 to withdraw money because the system in which they store your account info is still on Windows ME! It sounds glorious. I am doing this immediately.

    Oh, wait, no. I only work on ancient systems. Whoops.

  4. Re:Single Payer Cost Board Says "No" by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So 1 person has some trouble getting some old files vs our current system where we let folks with cancer die.

    Yeah, what a terrible tradeoff.

  5. Re:Single Payer Cost Board Says "No" by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I disagree with your claim that it has failed in Canada.
    It appears to be working fine, for an good example check out life expectancies.

    People always die, selecting who lives based on who has the most money is immoral.

    I pay my taxes happily, in the knowledge that they buy me the civilization I expect. That is the entire point.