How to Communicate Safely With All Medical Providers" style="border:0px solid black;padding:5px;">

How to Communicate Safely With All Medical Providers

by John Boden
(Founder of LifeLedger)

Good Medical Care ... depends on the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing.

Having a method for your medical providers to communicate and coordinate with each other is by far the best way to assure you receive health care with the highest level of safety and effectiveness. It will also be done more efficiently so the cost will be reduced, as well. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Personal Health Records (PHRs) are the tools to make this happen. The progress toward this goal has been slow and expensive. The economic stimulus package is talking about spending billions and billions more on the project. But wait a minute, let?s think first and spend second.

There is no Perfect solution for EHRs and PHRs. But here are a lot of good parts and pieces working and available now. Let's get them into use. To get started each different system does not have to work seamlessly with the others like a well-oiled machine. But each system does need to let the patient, and those they authorize, see their own records.

If the results from lab X, the records for the stay at hospital Y or the visit to Dr. Z can't be downloaded into the other's system, that's okay. Just allow you, the patient, to be the holder of the keys (passwords) that open the different system's doors. You then will always have access to your information, wherever it is located and be able to coordinate, explain, and prioritize what you choose to allow others to see. Will it be the final solution, no, will it work for now, you bet, and it can be quickly and efficiently implemented.

To start the ball rolling I propose the adoption of one basic practice standard which can be implemented with minimal system coordination and cost.

All medical records shall be securely held and electronically accessible via the Internet to the patient or those they designate.

With this simple directive, giant steps can be made in short order and at minimal cost.

The LifeLedger is a product that is designed to do work in this environment, providing a central online location, secure but with the ability to provide customized access to other online record locations. You can keep your contacts, living will, doctor?s names and numbers, and much, much more, along with the links directly to your records at your pharmacy, hospital, lab, insurance provider, out-patient clinics, or any other place where your information stored. It will not matter what system the doctor adopts, or that the hospital uses, just so that they will let you see your record that they holding for you in their possession as custodian. It is your record and belongs to you, even though few in the medical profession have yet to understand this legal and moral concept.