EMRs have been garnering attention from across the healthcare and consumer inustries thie week  - everyone from Congress to Google to PACs - due to the broad sweeping economic stimulus package currently in debate.

In addition to the charged consumer advocate accusations that Google supports selling EMRs (which we discuss here), a dozen organizations including patient advocates, vendors and health information exchanges have sent members of Congress a letter urging patient access to their electronic health records:

“Health I.T. investments via the economic stimulus legislation should be tied to development of systems that give anytime secure availability of EHRs for patients and their providers, the organizations recommend. Trusted third parties that could give patients access to their records include health record banks and trusts, personal health records vendors, insurers, and regional health information organizations, according to the letter. Patients would voluntarily choose to utilize one of these organizations.

“All EHR systems supported with public funds must fulfill a patient’s request for an electronic copy of all or part of their medical records, including audit trails and subsequent updates,” the letter states. “The copy would be transmitted to the patient or a patient-designated third party. Copies and updates of EHR data must be made available within 24 hours, absent exceptional circumstances, at no charge to patients or third parties, and should be available for sharing only with the informed consent of the patient.”

Read the full article here: “Groups Call for Patient EHR Access“

Bruce Kleaveland, a healthcare consultant with over 20 years of healthcare and information technology experience, of Kleaveland Consulting responded with this analysis:

“The recent call by a group of vendors/RHIOs/trade groups to require federally sponsored IT initiatives to require provide patient access to their records is interesting at a couple levels:

“a) It raises the question of who owns patient information; the patient or providers? That seems simple: patient of course should own it. However, not all providers feel that way. In a conversation that I had with an internist, he basically said: “I created the data, it is my record. And it is at my discretion what the patient sees within that record.” Many providers would feel the same way, especially about sensitive subjective assessments that might be included within a progress note.

“b) It also makes me wonder if we are truly “shovel-ready” as it pertains to government sponsored IT projects that provide a broader access and distribution to patient data. This request is indicative that there are still a bunch a thorny privacy/policy issues that seem to be unresolved. There is still plenty of healthcare IT projects to spend money on (i.e. EHR for small practices for instance), but the big network stuff seems to still be at the blueprint stage.”

We will keep updating the blog as the current legislative debate over EMRs continues.