personal health information – The Health Care Blog

Hurdles to Accessing One’s PHI

Dec 1, 2018

By John Moore

What is a fair price to charge a consumer to provide them a copy of their records? That is a question I’ve been pondering since a friend of mine showed me the bill from the local Steward IDN which is owned by private equity fund, Cerebus.

My friend is switching doctors due to a change by her employer in health plans. As a result, she requested a copy of her records to bring with here to her new physician. Seems like a pretty simple, straight-forward request. Steward was more than happy to provide those 10 pages of records and following is the cost breakdown they wished to charge her:

Clerical fee: $18.04

Cost/pg: $0.61

Mailing cost: $1.16

Total Cost: $25.30

Two dollars and fifty cents a page – Outrageous!

When I asked for a full copy of my pet’s records, about 20pgs, the Vet was more than happy to oblige, for free. When I asked for full copy of my car repair records (5yrs worth) as I was selling the car, my local mechanic was more than happy to oblige, again for free. So why is that when one asks for a copy of their medical records, which frankly they already paid for in their office visit charges, a company like Cerebus/Steward feels they have the right to charge such an exorbitant sum? Creating such hurdles to a patient’s ability to access their own personal health information (PHI) does nothing to improve healthcare delivery. Its time to put an end to such charges once and for all.

Sad thing about this whole story though is that under Massachusetts statute, Steward is allowed to charge up to $25.00. They discounted the bill $0.30 and lowered the bill to $25.00 Needless to say, I advised my friend to ignore the bill.

John Moore is an IT Analyst at Chilmark Research, where this post was first published.

Who Owns Patient Data?

Aug 20, 2012• 34

By Fred Trotter

Who owns a patient’s health information?

·The patient to whom it refers?
·The health provider that created it?
·The IT specialist who has the greatest control over it?

The notion of ownership is inadequate for health information. For instance, no one has an absolute right to destroy health information. But we all understand what it means to own an automobile: You can drive the car you own into a tree or into the ocean if you want to. No one has the legal right to do things like that to a “master copy” of health information.

All of the groups above have a complex series of rights and responsibilities relating to health information that should never be trivialized into ownership.

Raising the question of ownership at all is a hash argument. What is a hash argument? Here’s how Julian Sanchez describes it:

Medicine Unplugged

Jun 21, 2012• 15

By Eric Topol, MD

Just as the little mobile wireless devices radically transformed our day-to-day lives, so will such devices have a seismic impact on the future of health care. It’s already taking off at a pace that parallels the explosion of another unanticipated digital force — social networks.

Take your electrocardiogram on your smartphone and send it to your doctor. Or to pre-empt the need for a consult, opt for the computer-read version with a rapid text response. Having trouble with your vision? Get the $2 add-on to your smartphone and get your eyes refracted with a text to get your new eyeglasses or contact lenses made. Have a suspicious skin lesion that might be cancer? Just take a picture with your smartphone and you can get a quick text back in minutes with a determination of whether you need to get a biopsy or not. Does your child have an ear infection? Just get the scope attachment to your smartphone and get a 10x magnified high-resolution view of your child’s eardrums and send them for automatic detection of whether antibiotics will be needed. Worried about glaucoma? You can get the contact lens with an embedded chip that continuously measures eye pressure and transmits the data to your phone. These are just a few examples of the innovative smartphone software and hardware — apps and “adds” technology — that have been developed and will soon be available for broad use.

Overestimating Consumer Demand for Health Care Technology

Nov 1, 2011• 3

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

More people with higher levels of concern about their health feel they are in good health, see their doctors regularly for check-ups, take prescription meds “exactly” as instructed, feel they eat right, and prefer lifestyle changes over using medicines.

And 40% of these highly-health-concerned people have also used a health technology in the past year.

At the other end of the spectrum are people with low levels of health concern: few see the doctor regularly for check-ups, less than one-half take their meds as prescribed by their doctors, only 31% feel they eat right, and only 36% feel they’re in good health.

While roughly one-fourth to one-third of U.S. adults have been early adopters of consumer technologies in general across low-moderate-and-high health concern segments, more of those with greater health concerns tended to use health tech products in the past twelve months: 40% of the highest concerned people vs. 25% of those with moderate health concerns and 14% of those at the lowest-concern level.

These insights are discussed in a report, The New Role of Technology in Consumer Health and Wellness from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), published in October 2011.