Digital Health Records
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Since this popped back up to the top of the list,.. I came back and did some searching.
As @dashrender mentioned (to some degree) you need a PHR - Personal Health Record.. poking around I did find that Microsoft has one it would seem..
https://www.healthvault.com/us/en
It would seem that WebMD has one as well
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This type of question does bring about another question though.
How are healthcare providers able to use the data patients carry themselves?
We currently don't have a good working solution to insurance cards that are only on people's phones. A few insurance companies now have apps with the card information, and other people just take a picture of the card and keep that on their phone instead of carrying the card.
Both of the present an issue to use. Many (not all) request that providers capture images of the cards as the cards contain not only the policy holder's name and policy number, but also phone numbers to specific departments within the insurance company that handles that policy number.
I'm not sure if we are unique, but apparently we have a transcription issue when collecting the policy numbers, and by default we've never collected the phone numbers from these cards, but have always captured copies of the cards (used to be photo copies, now it's scans).
When people only have their phone.. now what? We don't currently allow patients to email us, the EHR itself doesn't have a secure portal to upload card images (not that patients would want to do that anyway), and my staff would have a difficult time at best accepting the email, converting the pictures as needed (often requiring them to merge the two pictures - front and back - into a single image to upload.
Currently I've resorted to using the webcam that we normally use to take a patient photo to take a picture of the phone and upload that, but often that still has issues as the front/back are on different screens/images and requires two pictures, merging, etc.
For the most part we push this back on the patient demanding that they acquire a physical card and bring it the next time they are in, or fax us a copy.
There just has to be a better way.
I know that many insurance companies now have only verification that EHRs can tap into while to bring over all pertinent information, but apparently that's only hitting about 80%, and it's that 20% that's killing us.
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@gjacobse said:
Awesome - thanks.
MS has even already included direct messaging. This means my providers can send my medical records directly to me securely, just like they would another provider.
Awesome!
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@Dashrender said:
When people only have their phone.. now what? We don't currently allow patients to email us, the EHR itself doesn't have a secure portal to upload card images (not that patients would want to do that anyway), and my staff would have a difficult time at best accepting the email, converting the pictures as needed (often requiring them to merge the two pictures - front and back - into a single image to upload.
Sounds like a "you" problem, right? You don't allow patients to email you - that's purely a decision on your end. You need to store structured data as an image and in a specific way that you dictate - again purely a design decision by the facility.
You could easily state this, unless I am missing something, not as a problem with non-paper insurance cards but as a problem of requiring digital information in a format that no one else is using and that you cannot accept from the outside word (there is no direct means of giving you the file you want, you have to provide it through a third party analogue human interface and convert it - even if the customer has the right file you won't accept it.)
Why not "decide" to not make this be a problem anymore? Or at least less of one?
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@gjacobse said:
As @dashrender mentioned (to some degree) you need a PHR - Personal Health Record.. poking around I did find that Microsoft has one it would seem..
Perfect, I think that that is what we need.
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@Dashrender said:
For the most part we push this back on the patient demanding that they acquire a physical card and bring it the next time they are in, or fax us a copy.
That's how the third world would handle it in the pre-computer era, as many of them are. Except they don't use insurance so there wouldn't be that particular need in the first place.
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One nice thing here.... doctors are free. You just go to the corner pharmacy, the doctor works there, there is no charge.
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I completely agree that this is a "us" problem. I've been providing options - i.e. an email (the onus would be on the patient, so there would be no HIPAA issue).
But assuming they sent anything more than a single file, it would still present an issue to our front desk staff with merging/creating new files.
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@Dashrender said:
I completely agree that this is a "us" problem. I've been providing options - i.e. an email (the onus would be on the patient, so there would be no HIPAA issue).
But assuming they sent anything more than a single file, it would still present an issue to our front desk staff with merging/creating new files.
Well if you solve the first problem it seems like it is probably not a big deal to solve the second. What's the reason for needing them merged? How is the final, single image being stored that makes that a problem?
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our EHR only allows a single image to be uploaded and included with our chart. So if the patient sends us a front picture and a separate back picture, I can't just upload each.. I have to merge them first.
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@Dashrender said:
our EHR only allows a single image to be uploaded and included with our chart. So if the patient sends us a front picture and a separate back picture, I can't just upload each.. I have to merge them first.
Which one do you use just out of curiosity?
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athenaNet from athenaHealth.
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@Dashrender said:
our EHR only allows a single image to be uploaded and included with our chart. So if the patient sends us a front picture and a separate back picture, I can't just upload each.. I have to merge them first.
Ah, okay. How annoying, only one picture with a chart? That seems incredibly limiting.
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@Dashrender said:
athenaNet from athenaHealth.
I've only ever seen/interacted with Medent and Meditech. Just curious what else was out there.
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Although having digital copies of the health insurance card itself is handy, that's not the critical part for us. We want to have access to our health information and be able to add to it ourselves whenever one of us visits a doctor or has a vaccination. I don't want to have to keep track of a USB stick.
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@Dominica said:
Although having digital copies of the health insurance card itself is handy, that's not the critical part for us. We want to have access to our health information and be able to add to it ourselves whenever one of us visits a doctor or has a vaccination. I don't want to have to keep track of a USB stick.
You could use this and just change the name
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@Dominica said:
Although having digital copies of the health insurance card itself is handy, that's not the critical part for us. We want to have access to our health information and be able to add to it ourselves whenever one of us visits a doctor or has a vaccination. I don't want to have to keep track of a USB stick.
Now you know to keep both sides of the cards in a single image!
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So did you sign up with any of them?
I activated HealthVault with my MS account.
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Here's my thought on digital health records. No matter who you go with, they're gonna get hacked at some point. So just seed a torrent of your data, and then go grab it again when you need it
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@Nic said:
Here's my thought on digital health records. No matter who you go with, they're gonna get hacked at some point. So just seed a torrent of your data, and then go grab it again when you need it
It's structured data, how do you get a torrent of that?
I have two factor authentication on my MS account, so I'm less worried about hackers getting into it.
