[LINK] The "health" record security model

[Mike]

Over the past 2 years I've experienced professionals in the health
system at their most impressive.  Two surgeons, three oncologists, two
gastroenterologists, two GPs, one hematologist, four hospitals as
inpatient, three different hospital EDs, many pathologists, and more.  I
soon found that not one of them had records that gave anything like a
complete story, so I collected records from all of them and created my
own complete set chronologically, on paper, now in four manilla folders
and a 5th folder dedicated to 28 scans (PET,MRI,Xray etc).  None of the
records was or is on My Health.  My ED experiences are all related to
infections not accident trauma or the like so I am sufficiently alert to
be able to take the latest folder with me which the doctors always grab
with glee.  The folder has an inside cover summary of conditions and
treatments with specialists names etc.  A short version is in my wallet
with my driving licence which as a 76 yrs old I'm required by law (Qld)
to always carry when driving.  Questions I've pondered are whether paper
is superior in my circumstances to a digital copy, what information is
critical, and how best to present it.  My experience is that the
information on paper has been immediately accessible under all of the
circumstance when it has been useful, more so that if it were in digital
format (stored on what?).  Keeping the information up-to-date is a
matter of discipline, not means.

I believe My Health is a good idea badly designed and implemented, and
until it is made reliable and is universally used then I have to take
responsibility for maintaining my own records and making them available
when needed.  Admittedly a simple solution for a pedantic, somewhat
aspergic retired IT grumpy with librarianship experience. It's not
privacy of my information that concerns me, it's whether it's complete,
up-to-date, and easily accessed.

Mike Shearer
Townsville

On 12/11/18 10:52 am, Jim Birch wrote:
> "The emergency room scenario is freighted with emotion, unstated
> expectations, time criticality, life-and-death decisions at their most
> extreme. It might be politically exciting to announce, but in practice
> a new system will only add to the load on THE most adrenalin-pumped,
> overworked, pressured and tired health professionals in the business.
> And being new it will probably let them down. It is NOT a good
> candidate for a first excursion into a workable health record :-) "
>
> Maybe you should go talk to an ED doctor.  As a matter of fact, a fair
> amount of time is lost in EDs trying to deduce information that would be in
> the current version of the health record, like preexisting conditions and
> drugs the patient is currently taking.  (Or the absence of comorbidities.)
>
> This loss time will result harm and death both for the patients themselves
> and coincidentally to the other people they could be treating.  Obviously,
> if you're are a 20 year old who has slammed into tree while mountain biking
> you probably don't have anything significant in a health record. However,
> if you are an 85 year old female you probably do.  When you are dragged
> into ED the people treating you want to know your history and they will put
> a fair bit of time and effort into finding out.  When you go back to your
> GP she will want to know what happened, whether there were any diagnoses
> and importantly what ongoing drug etc treatments you have been given that
> they need to take into account in your ongoing treatment.   Do you care
> about these frequent flyers (the big health care users) or or do you only
> care about yourself or your kind of people?  Younger males are typically
> less concerned about their health and way more likely to be attracted to
> libertarian arguments.  Apparently testosterone related.  Have you noticed?
>
> What beats me about this current moral panic is the uninformed flippant
> denial of the big positives of the shared health record.  It's like
> listening global warming deniers arguing that there are too many cold
> mornings.  It all about you, is it?  This sort of government initiative,
> eg, mandatory seat belts, anti-smoking, etc - has a long history of people
> obsessing about what are actually quite minor risks and inconveniences
> compared to being incapacitated or dead.  Personally, I'm quite happy to
> put up with a small risk of my health care information being hacked, if it
> improves my health outcomes, or even (get this!) if it improves the health
> outcomes for someone's 85 year old granny who I don't even know.  Or even
> if it contributes to the health care of people I don't know who aren't born
> yet.
>
> Jim
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