Almost everyone reading this has a hidden power that very few of us use. It is the power to get access to our electronic medical records. Federal law requires that medical records be available to patients. Most providers have concluded that electronic records are the most efficient way to meet this requirement. Federal regulations that took effect in 2021 require that all healthcare organizations give patients access to their electronic medical records. This gives rise to your hidden power.

It is often said that “Knowledge is power.” That is certainly true when it comes to your medical records. You can now know what your records say. This provides another layer of certainty that you won’t fail to learn about an important test result. You can correct errors in your records, and believe me, there may be a lot of them. In one study, 20% of participants found an error in their records and 40% of those people thought the error was a serious one. You can also communicate electronically with your providers and receive messages and notifications of next steps in the provider’s plan for your treatment. None of this will happen, however, if you don’t take the steps necessary to set up your access and review your records.
Most patients have been offered the opportunity to sign up for access to their electronic medical records. If you were offered and did not take advantage of the opportunity, do so now. Even if you were not offered the opportunity to sign up or cannot remember if you were, it is there for you and you should seek it out and take advantage of it.
When you sign up, there will usually be a tutorial to help you understand the features available to you and how to use them. Some providers are using Artificial Intelligence to respond to patient inquiries. Studies have shown that patients seem to prefer the AI responses to responses from actual human doctors. The AI responses are usually longer, contain more information, and are more empathetic. This should probably come as no surprise given how busy doctors are and how many demands there are on their time. This use of AI has the potential to free up doctors to do more work that actually requires human participation.
You should also be aware that there are apps out there that allow you to combine electronic records from multiple providers into a single location on one of your devices so you can see everything in one place. Not all providers have adopted the software necessary to transfer records securely and easily, but more and more are modernizing their systems every day. For added peace of mind, you can also download your records to a hard disk or to the cloud and save them there.
If you are responsible for managing the care of a family member, portal access to electronic medical records can be a godsend. If you do this, it is best if you have the patient formally grant you the right to have access to their records through the portal as opposed to using their credentials and signing in as them. If a doctor is not sure whether she is communicating with the patient or not, the doctor may be reluctant to provide certain information because of fear of violating the patient’s right to privacy. It is cleaner all the way around if you have formal access.
The times they are a changin’. Get with the times and get on line access to your medical records. You may be surprised what you find there. Even if you are not, it can only be a good thing for you to have this access.
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