connie824, There is a big difference between EHR and EMR.
It is obvious that this distinction is not well understood in the investment community and is the cause of much confusion.
EHR = Electronic Health Records
EMR = Electronic Medical Records.
They are no where near the same thing.
Most doctors, clinics, hospitals, etc. already store their records electronically. This is what is generally referred to as EMR (Electronic Medical Records). But there is no standard way of doing this yet. So currently, there is just no way they are going to provide all of this to the patient, because the next doctor wouldn't be able to deal with it.
The EHR (Electronic Health Records) is the "subset" that will be provided and can be carried around by the patient.
The EHR will include things like the prescriptions you're taking, reference to whatever conditions you might suffer from, etc. Or the Rehab regimen you're supposed to be following. And if you have a pace maker or a replacement hip, etc, there will be info about that. They certainly won't want to run you thru a Mag-Rez machine if you have metal inside you. And if you're unconscious then you can't tell them about it.
There probably won't be any referrence to the doctor who actually installed the pace maker or metal hip. Or when and why it happened. And I doubt there will be anything about the current pre-diagnosis study that you are now going through. But there should be more than enough data available so that you can be effectively and quickly treated, should you be far away from you primary care provider. But there won't be enough to reconstitute your medical history. For that, they would have to contact your primary care giver.
The larger body of data called EMR would include things like X-Ray scans, EKG readouts, in-depth clinical information concerning all sorts of things in great detail. Too many to list here. And it is very historical in nature and far more then just a current snapshot. It would include info that can only be interpreted by your primary care giver, and not some ER doctor. This type of info just isn't likely to be provided under any circumstances.
Right now, the laws and regulations surrounding Patient Privacy are even more strenuous that those that control banking and credit information, Social Security, etc. This is why the security of data is the main issue that is being dealt with right now. There are several proposed methods under consideration. In making the data more secure they will have to make it more difficult to access by your temporary doctor, should you need treatment. So the key is going to be the kind of standard infrastructure that evolves from this.
All of this constitutes a very involved technology problem to be solved, with a lot of parts that haven't been nailed down yet. It is very interesting to folks with a technical background, but somewhat opaque to the layman. And whatever the industry chooses to do it will probably evolve continuously over time.
Incidentally, I've never seen my doctor write anything down on paper. He uses a tablet computer with a stylus. Then when he is thru dealing with me he syncs it up with his work station in the his office, and that automatically updates my data on the bigger server hidden from view. Last year, when I had my prior health records ordered from Kaiser Permanente I was shocked to see that they arrived as 80+ individual Fax pages. There must be a better way to do this. And I'm thinking that this is the bigger part of the problem; the transmission of records directly between doctors where data security is not so much a concern.
Good Luck.
VV
