Basic Principles of Personal health records
From Open MedicDrive
Basic Principles
- Every person is ultimately responsible for making decisions about his or her health.
- Every person should have access to his or her complete health information. Ideally it should be consolidated in a comprehensive record.
- Information in the PHR should be understandable to the individual.
- Information in the PHR should be accurate, reliable, and complete.
- Integration of PHRs with EHRs of providers allows data and secure communication to be shared between a consumer and his or her health care team.
- Every person should have control over how their PHR information is accessed, used and disclosed. All secondary uses of PHR data must be disclosed to the consumer, with an option to opt-out, except as required by law.
- PHR products should be certified by CCHIT to comply with data standards, include a minimum data set, identify each data’s source, and meet security criteria consistent with HIPAA.
- The operator of PHR must be accountable to the individual for unauthorized use or disclosure of personal health information. The consumers should be notified immediately of breeches in security that could lead to disclosure of personal health information.
- A PHR may be separate from and does not normally replace the legal medical record of any provider.
- Privacy protection of PHR data should follow the data. PHR data must not be used in any discriminatory practices.
Here are just some reasons to order your medical records soon after you are treated:
- Records are not kept indefinitely by healthcare providers. Retention times may vary, depending on where you were treated.
- Paper records can be misfiled, destroyed by fire, damaged by water, or simply lost. Paper records are usually not created in multiple copies. This means the original record may be the only copy that exists.
- Older records may be stored on microfiche and the quality can deteriorate over time.
- Electronic records stored on computers, CDs, DVDs or small storage devices called “thumb drives” may also be lost or damaged.
- Like everyone else, physicians retire, sell their practice, merge with other practices, or die.
[edit] Source
- The Value of Personal Health Records A Joint Position Statement for Consumers of Health Care by American Health Information Management Association American Medical Informatics Association February 2007.
