Saturday, August 31, 2013

You need to take control of your personal health record now (before it gets complicated), pt. 2

You need to take control of your personal health record now (before it gets complicated), pt. 2.

Seriously.  If you wait to even find out about PHRs until you are on the other side of the mountain, putting one together will be prohibitively difficult for one or more of the following reasons:
  • Destroyed. They will have been disposed of (usually after 7 years) and no longer available.  
  • Prohibitively expensive in one go.  They will cost money.  $1.27 a page or more.  And they will print out and charge you for every page, including the ones that say nothing but "Page 2 of 2."  
  • Lost.  They will be impossible to obtain because they were lost in the move/merger/buyout/closing of the clinic.  
  • Overwhelming.  There will be so many of them that you won't be able to organize them in a meaningful way.
  • Useless.  Some of them will be comprised solely of doctor or PT speak, and they will mean nothing to you (OR OTHER DOCTORS) and will thus be worthless.  Better to find this out early, maybe while the doc or PT remembers well enough to actually produce a coherent 1-page summary if asked nicely.  And before you pay $1.27/page for 30 pages of useless gibberish.


No comments:

Post a Comment