11
votes
US Federal law now requires distribution of complete healthcare records to patients in digital formats
Link information
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- Title
- Call it data liberation day: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
- Published
- Oct 6 2022
- Word count
- 1353 words
The article goes on to make the points that medical records were already supposed to be accessible to patients under HIPAA (the U.S. law which also covers medical records privacy), and suggests the release in standard, interoperable digital formats won't be an overnight change.
On a personal level, I've already had the peculiar experience of seeing a diagnosis recorded that's different, and more serious, than what the clinician told me it was.
I suspect there will be a new groundswell of patients inquiring about whether they're correctly diagnosed, whether their physicians are upcoding diagnoses for reimbursement or understating severity, etc. There's also the possibility of a secondary market where patients sell their own data, especially for rare and interesting genetic diseases.
But it's also going to mean an end to the days when physicians were candid about their biases in patient records. No more "FLK" (shorthand for "funny-looking kid", usually for miscellaneous genetic or gender issues) and other coded judgments that have historically populated medical records jargon.
And interoperability... Just because records are available in PDF doesn't mean they can be directly imported and searchably accessed in any of the plethora of records systems that have developed in the U.S. Interesting times.