Google your medical records?

MomSeattle · DadSeattle · SPI · MySeattlePix · My account

Local

US/World

Sports

Business

A&E

Life

Comics

Photos

Opinion

Blogs

Buy Ads

Jobs

Autos

Homes

Rentals

NWsource

Blogs

Health Report

« Cancer patients prepare for a disaster | Main | Playing this game may help ADD/ADHD »

Google your medical records?

We "Google" for just about anything these days - why not "Google" our medical records, too?

Apparently, that's what may be just around the corner. Google and the Cleveland Clinic announced today they're now in the online health records market.

In a statement, the pair explained a pilot program they're launching that will enroll 10,000 or so Cleveland Clinic patients a nd have them test out using medical data like prescriptions, conditions and allergies through the clinic using a secure Google profile.
The goal, they say, is to eventually let patients access and interact with physicians and pharmacies anywhere. Which is a nice idea. Ask almost anyone who has switched hospitals or tried to get their records when they moved.

Since this last posted, Dr. Eric Seaver has weighed in on the topic. He is a physician at Group Health, where patients can now e-mail with their physicians.

He said the pilot prgram seems to answer to the very common problem of communication of information between patients and their providers, but it's not clear if it will also help make providers communicate with each other about common patients.

He said studies show that when doctors can't easily access a patien't prior medical records (including diagnostic testing results, laboratory results and medications previously prescribed to patients) it leads to duplicated tests (and unnecessary costs), inappropriate care (for example, delayed follow up on a prior abnormal test), and avoidable medication errors.

Right now, to get the prior records of a patient, the patient must first provide a signed release that has to be faxed or mailed to the other provider's office. That office pays staff to review this release, locate the paper chart (or electronic in more instances these days), copy the appropriate records, fax or mail them back to the requesting provider's office, where the records must be routed to the appropriate provider, who must then sift through pages of records to find the relevant information. It's a waste in time, money and staff and ultimately leads to inefficient care of the patient, Seaver said.

But the idea of electronic medical records isn't all that new. Many hospitals and medical groups across the country, including in Seattle, offer it in varying degrees, including being able to manage appointments online and e-mailing doctors with questions or concerns.

The idea that one can use their information anywhere is new and could have great potential. Security is huge, though. Preventing hackers from accessing someone's medical records like they access people's financial records (think identity theft) is a challenge. Security concerns have prevented some hospitals from moving forward in the electronic medical records arena as fast as they would like.

Seaver addresses safety this way:

The issues of safety and privacy are key with any electronic medical record system due to the extreme personal nature of health care and the legalities that govern the means by which information can be shared in the health care system. Legal changes approximately four years ago (HIPAA) provided new legal barriers to the sharing of patients' medical information. Though this clearly needs to be stated explicitly, HIPAA also lead to even more inefficiencies in the health care system. For example, a physician caring for a patient who recently had a normal cholesterol test could not leave a message on the patient's phone stating the tests were normal without the expressed, written consent of that patient. If you take the complexities of electronic communication of such information between various parties, the legal issues multiply.

In terms of overall safety of electronic medical records, they must be at least as safe as paper records to be successful. People often do not think about how unsafe paper records could be. In my example above in which a patient's records are sent from one office to another, you can add up the number of people who must physically handle the records. Multiple this by the thousands of patients in a primary care office and you see the potential problems with the safety of paper records. There is also no "paper trail" with paper records whereas secure electronic medical records do provide an increased level of accountability-it is possible to see who has accessed the information and when. In a system like the one Cleveland Clinic and Google hope to launch, the challenges in providing a secure system would appear to be much greater...Finally, patient empowerment is in an important benefit of electronic medical records and I think will ultimately play a large role in improving our nation's health care.

Dr. Ted Eytan, medical director of health informatics and web services at Group Health said there is a lot of great innovation happening nationwide.

He's currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Information Therapy and is in New York helping the state's health systems take the next step in making their electronic health records accessible to their patients using what he's learned and implemeted here in Seattle. His thoughts about the Google/Cleveland Clinic partnership:

We would like to see every patient in every care system activated and empowered with their own health information and access wherever and whenever care is needed. To that end, I'd welcome the innovation in portability and access in this initiative, among two organizations that provide great service to their customers. We obviously don't know the details of this program, but we'll watch carefully for those and keep doing what we do to adopt new innovation and develop our own to improve all of health care. You can count on that. Innovation is a virtuous circle...

Posted by at February 25, 2008 5:05 p.m.
Category: Group Health

Comments

#100606

Posted by unregistered user at 2/21/08 5:13 p.m.

Wow, I cannot believe anyone would be so foolish as to put their medical records online knowingly. Google says that they will be password protected.
I'm sorry to have to rain on the parade, but passwords are only speed bumps and will not be effective in securing this type of data. Medical records also contain personally identifiable information and other information that would and could be used in identity theft. Others may actually want the medical information to use as direct marketing tools focused as those with a certain type of malady. On the darker side, theft of health information could also be used as evidence for insurance denial citing "pre-existing conditions". An even much darker side, may also be explored. What if someone hacked Google and obtained everyone's medical records and associated personally identifiable information and used it to build a bio-weapon. Prudence argues that there should be separation of information. Putting our health information on something as flimsy as a password protected website is insane.