A big “thumbs up” to Toby Cosgrove, CEO of Cleveland Clinic for being the champion of “My Chart”, a program that allows patients, through password protected access, to obtain information from their own chart. As patients become “ePatients” and increasingly assume responsibility for their own health care decisions, they will demand this type of access to their own lab results and other health information. In addition, Dr. Cosgrove’s patient portal allows them to request prescription refills and ask for second opinions.
Since so much good (and bad) health information is available online, this access to your own chart, and having a portal to communicate with professional health providers on line is the big “missing” piece in the e Patient revolution.
I hope many others will follow Dr. Cosgrove’s example and begin offering this service to their patients.
Check out the work being done by Ted Eytan and Josh Seidman at Patient Centered Health Information Technology (PCHIT): http://www.pchit.org. They are blogging from Boston this week, visiting outpatient practices like the Bullfinch Group as well as the Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation.
My favorite post so far is titled, “Your primary doctor is like your mother. You don’t change your mother.” (see: http://www.pchit.org/2007/11/02/66/#more-66)