Some thoughts about the current crop of PHRs in the wake of the AHIMA PHR campaign launch as reported by Digital HealthCare & Productivity.

With one of the largest informatics groups in the US set to encourage the adoption of PHRs I am wondering what happens if they are successful.

First of all if there is a 10% – 20% increase in patients requesting their records from healthcare providers, are they staffed to handle this?

Are online PHRs any better than keeping your own paper PHR? They aren’t any more interoperable than paper; arguably even less so.

You can’t control the protection of your data when it is stored in someone else’s database.

You’ll have to print it out to take to the healthcare provider with you anyway unless your’s one of the very few with Internet access in the exam room.

AHIMA’s myPHR is a great resource for people to learn about accessing, using and protecting their data.

I suggest that for now people download the adult and child forms (as appropriate) from the AHIMA website. Fill them out and take them to the healthcare facility with you.

When your primary care provider gets a shiny new open source EMR tell them that you want them to get one with a PHR portal or help fund adding that feature so you can help manage your information.

You may still have to print out information for some of your providers, but at least you have something that gives you some advantage and your primary care provider still has the responsibility to protect your personal health information.

Thanks for listening. 🙂