My post yesterday titled What is a Customer to do? reflected on the current state of PHRs in the marketplace. Received a good comment back from RHIOboy which forced me to delve a little deeper into the issue of Interoperability, specifically the developing CCD standard, for which public review and comment recently closed (July 18, 2007). CCD, which stands for Continuity of Care Document is basically a bringing together of CCR (Continuity of Care Record) and HL7, a standard created for EHRs (Electronic Health Records)
In my research, came across the following Interoperability
article that was published on July 25, 2007 (fresh off the presses) by the Massachusetts Medical Society, one of the original contributors to the CCR standard. This is a good primer on interoperability and standards development status.
PHR’s. Hmmnn… I can’t help but feel that it’s being sold to Americans much like 401K’s were sold over the traditional pension plans. ‘Empowering’ people that have no idea what is relevant information and what isn’t. I was reading an interesting opinion on PHR’s in general and his point was about people’s natural tendency towards Loss Aversion. Meaning leaving parts of the record out because your embarrassed, don’t agree, in denial, etc. If you asked people if they would rather take on the responsibility for maintaining their own medical information rather than have a complete, easily accessed medical record that is updated and maintained by the people that provide the care, I think I can guess the outcome of that poll.