PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Health Information Exchange, known as “currentcare,” the electronic health records database currently under construction, is “a work in progress,” according to Rhode Island Quality Institute officials.
The institute hosted a demonstration of the system on Dec. 8 at its “Putting the Health IT Pieces Together” expo.
To date, there are some 187,000 Rhode Island patients enrolled in currentcare, with an average of 8,000 new patients added a month, according Charles Hewitt, who directs the Quality Institute’s Health Information Exchange program management. The hope is to have 300,000 patients signed up by the end of 2012, Hewitt said.
The session included a demonstration of what the actual currentcare format would look like on a computer screen, showing the health records of imaginary patient receiving health care services in Rhode Island.
A number of physicians attending the session asked about the integration of the data feeds from various sources. “If the data is available in the transaction, it will be available in currentcare,” Hewitt said.
Under the current model of the system, patients cannot log into the system to retrieve their own records, but they can put in a request, according to Hewitt.
Dr. Gus Manocchia, the chief medical officer of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, who said that the health insurer has been championing currentcare, noted that enrollment has been slower than expected.
“We have been trying to push it in as many practices as possible,” he said. “Currentcare makes a lot sense.” However, he continued, there needs to be a significant volume of people signed up to give it value. “It’s frustrating that it’s an opt-in, rather than an opt-out [enrollment],” he added.
It was “up in the air,” according to Manocchia, regarding the status of a legislative proposal to have both the R.I. Health Information Exchange and the R.I. All Payors Claims Database be paid for through a small surcharge on all health insurance claims.
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One of the biggest concerns with ‘digitizing’ health care records of patients is a valid and genuine privacy issue not thoughtfully discussed …. especially within the medical community itself.
ACCESS needs to be policed / monitored for certain – but, the whole protection of the average patient’s record[s] when shared within the network ( Rhode Island Health Information Exchange, known as “currentcare,” ) is not a true protection for them.
For example, a patient may NOT want every heath care professional (no exaggeration!) on earth looking at their records – they may have a problem with a doctor, nurse or hospital for instance and they want if not required to have them actually sealed.
Or, they elect to have a second opinion (sometime even a third one) and the intra-medical privacy issue (within the database system) is too important if not sacred to the Doctor-Patient Relationship to have these files exploited by many people.
The problem when illegible orders or prescriptions written by doctors, interpretations via pharmacies, physicians or hospital records for storage (or even an emergency room password code system) appears legitimate, but to have sheer Open Access appears to be a violation of the basic tenets of the patients’ privacy and Physician-Medical/Patient Relationship in memoriam.
Also, when patients want COPIES of their Medical Records from such medical authorities (notwithstanding statutory language) they are given a hassle to rightfully receive COPIES of what is theirs.
It seems a little more insight, re-evaluation and extrapolation on this topic should be explored.