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EHRs/PHRs
Dorothy Tillman Update: Vindication!
About a year ago, we read about about Dorothy Tillman’s heroic efforts to get a copy of her aunt’s  medical records.
Here’s a recap:  On a Saturday evening Dorothy took her 86 year old aunt to a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama. Frustrated after an overnight stay in the ER which she said yielded “little treatment”, she requested a copy of her aunt’s medical records before leaving. When she was told that it was hospital policy to request records “in writing”, Dorothy escalated her […]
Why Clinical Groupware May Be the Next Big Thing in Health IT
by David C. Kibbe MD, MBA
What would you call health care software that:
Is Web-based and networkable, therefore highly scalable and inexpensive to purchase and use;
Provides a ‘unified view’ of a patient from multiple sources of data and information;
Is designed to be used interactively – by providers and patients alike – to coordinate care and create continuity;
Offers evidence-based guidance and coaching, personalized by access to a person’s health data as it changes;
Collects, for analysis and reporting, quality and performance measures as […]
How Should Fed HIT Dollars Be Spent? Cat vs. Dog POV.
“Where’s the single best place to get up to speed on how the Feds should spend $20 billion to advance health information technology (HIT)?”
A colleague asked me this question a couple of days ago, and at first I hesitated. Then it struck me — Matthew Holt’s The Health Care Blog has become the focal point for discussion of this critical topic.
Matthew’s very recent article — Cats & dogs: Can we find unity on health care IT change? — summarizes the two […]
Leavitt’s Framework Shoehorns the HIPAA Privacy Rule onto Your Personal Health Information
by Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe MD, MBA
Have you ever heard anyone tell a happy story of how easy it is to get a copy of their paper medical records?
Departing Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt is laying the groundwork for this same story to apply to access to YOUR electronic personal health information.
Here’s an overview to what evolved into a long posting:
Analysis: The Leavitt Framework Uses the HIPAA Privacy Rule as a Baseline for Electronic Access to Personal Health Information
Implication:Â Extending […]
An Open Letter to the Obama Health Team on Health IT Spending
By David C. Kibbe, MD MBA and Brian Klepper, PhD
It seems likely that the Obama administration and Congress will spend a significant amount on health IT by attaching it as a first-order priority to the fiscal stimulus package. We take the President-elect at his word when he recently said:
"…we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the Internet. That is why the economic recovery plan I’m proposing will help […]
CCHIT Should Support BOTH the HL7 CCD and the ASTM CCR for PHRs.
The federal government sponsored Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT ) is undertaking a certification process for personal health records (PHRs) . The CCHIT PHR Work Group has invited public comment on the First Draft of the PHR Certification Criteria .
The current draft of the PHR Certification Criteria specifies use of the HL7 Continuity of Care Document (CCD) as the only endorsed standard for interoperable exchange of information to and from PHRs. This is extremely short-sighted.
I wrote a comment to […]
From PHRs to PHRSs
Personal health records (PHRs)Â are evolving toward becoming Personal Health Record Systems (PHRSs).
…that’s my key takeaway from attending the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Project Health Design (PHD) conference in Washington D.C. on September 17. The conference was entitled A ‘Report Out’ from Project HealthDesign and Forum on Next-Generation PHRs .
A PHD Fact Sheet capsulizes the evolution from PHRs to PHRSs:
Goldilocks: “Markle’s Framework for Networked Personal Health Information is Just Right”
By Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks. Like most Americans, Goldilocks had concerns about achieving just the right amount of data liquidity for her personal health information (PHI).
Until today Goldilocks felt between a rock and a hard place:
"I want my PHI to be appropriately liquid — just the right viscosity. My PHI should be viscous enough to flow to my trusted […]
Is the Medical Establishment the Best Guardian of Your Medical Data?
David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA and Vince Kuraitis
Drs. Mandl and Kohane begin their recent article in NEJM with the statement that “large corporations are seeking an integral and transformative role in the management of health care information,” and then warn that this “will profoundly affect the biomedical research enterprise.”  Â
At issue for the authors is who controls the information about you and me, our health and healthcare data. Without coming right out and saying it directly, they worry that data in […]
Feds Call on Google and Microsoft to Breathe Life into the NHIN
Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe, MD MBA
Who is the federal government calling on to breathe life into the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN)? Google and Microsoft.
In our first article of this series describing the Personal Health Information Network (PHIN), we noted early entrants as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, and Dossia. We also noted that the network could grow rapidly, and that others would want to join or link to the PHIN.
With Uncle Sam announcing plans to link to the PHIN, […]