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Comment by gwillen | Hacker News Reader

I honestly fear EHRs. Chances are they they will offer me greatly-reduced access to my own medical records, while offering my insurance company (or prospective insurers) greatly increased access. I am open to hearing that some regulation ensures this will not be the case.

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Your fear is understandable, but I feel you would have less doubt if you knew more about the EHR space.

The government is laying out strict regulations on how EHR's should work and what data can be used (and by whom).

Access by patients to their own records is mandated as part of the certification and we already see widespread use of patients accessing their data from EHR systems via our patient portal and iPad app for patients.

Can I get my data in a portable format I can take with me to another provider, as easily as paper records? Or can I _only_ get my own data through your proprietary portal / application?

Patient records can be given to patients in .pdf format (human readable) and also one of two government specified HL7 formats (CCR and CCD.) The MU certification makes all vendors give patients/doctors the ability to download one of the format (CCR or CCD), but all vendors have to be able to read both formats.

The MU guidelines did a great job of forcing all of the vendors to adopt one of these two standards and to understand them both.

Ok, that's exciting then. Thanks for the info. :-)

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