The Power Of Your HealthCare Data: Don’t leave home without it!
|by Erika Harvey; UX Designer, Nurse, Citizen Health Ambassador, 2018
“Summary of CA law
Medical records are the property of the medical provider that prepares them, for example, the group practice or hospital. Patient records do not belong to the patient, nor do patient records belong to the physician. The group practice owns the patient medical records.
The patient has a right to view the original medical records, and to get copies. The medical provider must send the copies within 15 days after the patient’s written request. The provider may charge 25¢ per page plus a reasonable clerical fee. For diagnostic films, such as an x-ray, MRI, CT and PET scans, the charge can be the actual cost of copying. The provider may even demand payment before sending the records.
CA law does not require that the physician group transfer patient records to a departing physician. Rather, transferring records between providers is considered a professional courtesy. There is no deadline for transferring records, no penalty for failure to transfer the records, and the transferring group may charge a fee for the service.”
Okay, stop right there! I know you just skimmed through that, but you should really go back and read it. Let it sink in. Let the meaning behind the words start to unnerve you. If they don’t, then let me put it into context with a hypothetical situation.
You are out with your family on a three day quick holiday. You’ve been out sunbathing, having a few drinks, you hand your beer to your friend and say “Here, watch me do this……”
You wake up looking up at a nurse looking down at you in your hospital bed. You try and speak but you can’t get words out, in fact you start to realize that there is something in your mouth, down your throat! That something is blocking your ability to draw breath and you begin to panic. The nurse sees this and adds something to the IV line danging by your bedside and your eyes begin to droop as you watch the liquid enter your veins, and then nothing.
Meanwhile, your girlfriend is feaking out because the nurse put you back to sleep and she has to be taken to the other room where they explain to her that they have to keep you calm so that you don’t pull out your endotrachial tube and cause respirory issues, basically you stop breathing.
How did this all happen? Well, while you were off living your life, your doctor left the group he was working with and was waiting on all the records to be sent to him. While it has been four months, he still has yet to have received half of those records and yours is among the missing. Because of that, he did not see the list of medications you were taking for an illness that you weren’t open about with anyone. So no one knew — but your medical record — and that combining that drug with some of the other drugs that were given after your accident would cause system failure.
And no one is to blame. Not the doctors group that hasn’t released your records, not your doctor who has not received the records. It basically boils down to it being your fault for not knowing the laws about patient chart protocol. I mean come on! Everyone knows exactly what needs to happen to make sure your information is with the right physicians, right?
How do we stop a scenario like that from happening?
“We begin by taking the power of ownership over our information from the corporate groups that run practices and put it in the hands of the consumer so that they can make sure that the people they wish to have it, can have it without a large bureaucratic brewhaha. “
How does one achieve that?
“One of the biggest emerging trends and thoughts has been regarding blockchain. What exactly is blockchain you may ask?”
To put it simply, blockchain is a way to keep your personal information out of a database warehouse and store it in the cloud securely, because little bits of it are stored in different places, and only you with your special key, can unlock that treasure hunt box and provide the complete picture. It is a way to give you back the power of controlling your information and only sharing it with those that you trust or should have it. No worrying about if your insurance company is going to get a hold of it and start using it to match you up with a general “health scorecard” and then remove you from certain things because they find you not good enough to remain with the level of insurance you have. Anything for them to save a buck and deny.
So, while this is a made up scenario, it happens. I’ve seen it first hand working as an Emergency Room nurse and trauma nurse. We do our best to collect as much information as possible during emergencies but when groups hold onto things because of some weird power play, or for whatever reason we are left in the dark.
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About Citizen Health: Citizen Health is a peer-to-peer health economy powered by the blockchain and designed to transform health, medicine and science. Our vision is to create a global health economy where every man, woman, and child will be healthy and have access to the very best care regardless of social status, economic position, or political views. We will take control of our health and create a prosperous future for ourselves, our children and future generations.
