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There is nothing more important than your family's health. Starting from before
birth, we do all we can do to assure a healthy child-prenatal visits, healthy
diet, regular exercise. This is all in our control. After birth, we don't
always retain control of our children's medical information. This information
is scattered in medical records of PCPs, specialist, hospital and labs and it
can be difficult to maintain.
The Department of Health & Human Services encourages the use of Personal
Health Records (PHRs): "Once equipped with the information about their
health and health care choices, consumers will be empowered to co-manage their
health and participate actively in decisions about their care."
The President has set an overarching vision for improving the quality, safety,
and service of health care, and also for using health care resources more
efficiently. PHRs are a key part of this vision. PHRs enable personal medical
information to remain not only with the health care provider, but with the
patient as well. A central repository of medical information is your most
powerful tool in ensuring you and your family receive the most effective and
efficient medical treatments.
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According to The Department of Health and Human Services, consumer centric information will facilitate the following benefits:
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Sophisticated decision-support tools
that help identify treatments best suited to a given patient would help reduce
unnecessary treatments and ensure prevention procedures, both of which result
in better outcomes.
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Medications would be ordered with
computerized systems that eliminate handwriting errors and automatically check
for doses that are too high or too low.
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Information tools would also search
for harmful interactions with other drugs and for allergies.
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Prescriptions would be checked against
the health plan's formulary, and the out-of-pocket costs of the prescribed
drug would be compared with alternative medications.
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Patient information would be readily available for
clinicians at the point of care and would help patients improve their own
care.
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