I am a big proponent of personal health records, and speaking first hand with helping my mother who is a senior, you need some real hands on help to convey the concept and help individuals understand the value. If you just put it out there on the web with sparse meetings, it’s not going to have a lot of impact. There’s physicians out there that don’t understand it either and I have experienced that first hand with statements to the effect that this is not important or my staff and I have other things to do, so again there’s one more area where training and value could use a hand. 
CMS names four PHR vendors for Medicare pilot program and includes Google Health
Sometimes the tech folks seem to maybe forget there’s an entire area of society that needs help, baby steps I could say. There’s been such a very small outreach effort in this area, lots of press, but press can’t fulfill the education process. Perhaps when Microsoft opens their new retail stores we could maybe see some help in this area, education on personal health records. I touched on the exact same subject when it was announced, links below. CMS said they would like to see more involvement, well could they perhaps show some additional involvement themselves?
Medicare Pilot Personal Health Care Pilot Program – Education and Awareness Needed
Are electronic and personal health records inevitable? – Sure they are but we need education and mentors to make it work!
One other big part of the problem is the fact that we have very few role models, you don’t see anyone in Congress getting behind this either or anyone who is large in the public eye, maybe we need Oprah to sign up to make some impact or Dr. Oz to chime in to break some important ground here. Even having someone like Mark Leavitt speak about how he uses a personal health record would be great, but again, no role models and so you reap whatever you put forward and sad, but this is the reality of non participation without proper and continued education processes. Where are the PHR mentors and do they exist? BD
Arizona senior citizens have been slow to enroll in a federal program that encourages them to store their medical histories on Google or other commercial Web sites.
Officials from Medicare and participating software vendors acknowledge that a small percentage of Arizona seniors have signed up for the $2.5 million health-records program launched in January, raising questions about whether the one-year experiment should continue next year.
"We'd like to see more involvement," said David Sayen, regional administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees the government insurance programs for seniors, the poor and disabled.
Medicare-claims data can be confusing for some consumers, particularly those who are not familiar with medical terms, Donnell said, adding his company works to make sure claims information is easy to understand
Seniors lag on medical-record plan
Related Reading:
Great that you asked about PHR help, Medical Quack. We are listening to you at www.nomoreclipboard. Reminder: this is a pilot for very good reasons, and we are in Arizona to learn. Comments: See link
ReplyDeletehttp://nomoreclipboard.typepad.com/no_more_clipboard/2009/08/what-we-have-here-is-a-failure-to-communicate-.html