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The Ebola situation in Dallas—with one patient death, two nurse exposures, dozens under quarantine, and talk last week of declaring a state of emergency in the city—has thrown into stark relief the gaps between public health and frontline clinical care. But those gaps also present opportunities to make public health data work harder and to change how doctors approach clinical care in times when events and information are changing at Internet speed.
That’s the gist of an editorial by Boston Children’s Hospital’s Kenneth Mandl, MD, MPH, published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
It comes down to making electronic health records (EHRs) work more flexibly, in ways that help promote situational awareness among clinicians during times of crisis and flag instances when a patient’s condition may require more attention than usual. Full story »
Israel Green-Hopkins, MD, is a second-year fellow in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and a fierce advocate for innovation in health information technology, with a passion for design, mobile health, remote monitoring and more. Follow him on Twitter @israel_md.
A few months ago, I spent 15 minutes filling out a detailed health data form at the doctor’s office. The paper form contained multiple questions about my health, family history, medications and basic demographic information. I assumed that an administrative specialist would code it into the practice’s electronic medical record (EMR) to be put to use. So it came as a surprise when I spent another 5 minutes reviewing the form with my physician, who then proceeded to type this information into the EMR herself. I’m confident neither my physician nor I felt enabled by the experience.
Countless people have had a similar experience—or worse, filled out a form with no sign that any clinician ever saw the information. Though the industry has made outstanding progress in adopting EMRs, the practice of data acquisition from patients remains cloudy. Patient-generated health data (PGHD), a term encompassing all forms of data that patients provide on their own, is a relatively new concept in health care. It falls into two broad groups: historical data and biometric data. Full story »
(Courtesy Accenture and Harris Interactive)
One of the big selling points of electronic health records (EHRs) is patient empowerment. By letting patients have their data, the thinking goes, they’ll be more engaged in their own health and empowered to take actions that will make them healthier.
Which is good not just for the patient, but for society as a whole, since living healthier means you’ll need to make use of fewer health care resources. Plus, a small study by doctors at a Veterans Affairs hospital showed that patients like having access to their records. Seems like a win-win, right?
While some physicians agree, there are some holdouts. That’s the take-home message from a survey recently published by Accenture and Harris Interactive, in which they asked 3,700 physicians in eight countries their opinions about letting patients have access to their medical and health data.
“The results of the survey are certainly quite interesting, although not surprising,” says Fabienne Bourgeois, MD, MPH, a pediatrician at Boston Children’s and leader of the hospital’s MyChildren’s EHR project. Full story »
