All through my childhood, teen years and, now, young adult years I’ve gone to my doctor’s office for yearly checkups, physicals and random things that come up now and then (i.e. broken bones, viruses).
Every time I visit my doctor I wait in the waiting room, get called back by a nurse, get weighed and have my blood pressure checked, quickly explain what brings me in and then wait for my doctor to make his/her appearance.
When the doctor comes in he/she always smiles at me and asks me what brings me while he/she reads what the nurse wrote about what brings me in.
I always give my doctor a more in-depth explanation of what brings me in than what I just told the nurse (obviously).
And, while I’m explaining my current “random medical thing” to my doctor, he/she is usually browsing over my past medical records while simultaneously listening to my explanation. My doctor will sometimes reference my current “random medical thing” with something from my past medical records.
I have never seen my medical records!
In the past, my doctor would flip through a manila folder and browse his/her organized notes. Recently, they switched over to keeping my medical records on the computer. As I explain my “random medical thing” my doctor enters info into the computer.
Note: I just switched over to Kaiser Permanente and have no idea what system they use for medical records. You can view my new doctor’s KP profile here.
My recent switch to Kaiser Permanente (just graduated, moved off my parent’s insurance) got me thinking about what will happen to my medical records at my old doctor’s office.
Here are some questions I have about my medical records:
Do they follow me to my new doctor? How are they transferred?
Does my new doctor get all the unique and interesting notes my old doctor wrote down or entered into the computer?
Also, I never really thought about this but can I look at them too?
I never really thought to ask my old doctor to hand over that manila folder so I could take a look. I would really like to see all the notes and random medical things that have been recorded since I was a little baby.
I can remember some big things I went to the doctor for but I can’t remember specific virus names or that one oddly named antibiotic that I used for three weeks ten years ago.
I really want to view my medical records!
Hopefully in the near future I will be able to look at my medical records in a separate browser tab as I write blog posts. That is going to be awesome.
Google Health looks like it’s trying to help me do this. Check out Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Google Health presentation at HIMSS last week:
See the video on YouTube.
Also, Jay Parkinson MD just launched hello health and it looks amazing.
Jay on hello health:
“hello health is the consumer brand of healthcare delivery powered by the Myca platform. It’s Geek Squad with doctors and a Netflix-priced monthly membership subscription fee — it is a branded healthcare “experience” that mixes “concierge service for all,” with house/office calls and web visits via email, IM, video chat, and text messaging. It’s Fed Ex, Apple, Whole Foods, Amazon, Toyota, Fresh Direct, and Geek Squad all applied to healthcare delivery.”
Jay and Myca created an amazing visual interface to display medical records. You can see the visual interface they created in this video.
UPDATE: Kaiser Permanente has a My Health Manager that let’s you view your medical records:
But, my medical records from my old doctor don’t transfer (?!):
