You are finally in control of your own health data: you paid for it, you own it, it’s the law.
You have the most to gain from the move to portable electronic personal health records if they are done right. You gain when you show up at a new healthcare provider and because your health records are viewable in a standard browser, they can provide fast efficient treatment to you. If they can avoid repeat tests, they save everyone time and naturally you will be extremely grateful. Your confidence in this new healthcare provider and in the medical system will grow if you are able to use information from your PHR in order to increase your safety and avoid medical errors such as drug-drug interactions. Everyone’s—yours, the insurance company’s, the healthcare provider’s, even your employer’s—costs drop if the repeat tests are avoided.
But you must understand that your new provider cannot and will not take the risk of basing treatment on the information in the PHR if there is a chance that information was incorrect, modified or out of date and the result could hurt you. On the flip side, if your PHR really is trustable, than the new provider will not need to follow the antiquated process of obtaining remote medical record—faxing releases, signatures and your records—delaying treatment perhaps for days. That delay may be dangerous for you and certainly will frustrate you.
This Gordian knot can be cut. Even though you are new to the healthcare provider, it is possible for him or her to know for sure if the information presented by your PHR about you is “certified original” information they can trust and, most importantly, on which they can base treatment.
IAM HEALTH provides a service to the health information originators and the PHRs who aggregate and deliver this information to the point-of-care (even if it’s delivered over the Internet in a standard browser). This service enables new healthcare providers to quickly, easily and reliably know for sure if the records are authentic and 100% unaltered: if they are certified original. They avoid liability risks, they avoid the time, cost and frustration to you of performing repeat tests, they cut expense out of the system. Most importantly, you will have received timely, efficient, excellent treatment making you happy and probably very loyal to your new provider.
