A key premise: information should follow the patient, and artificial obstacles – technical, business related, bureaucratic – should not get in the way.  As a doctor, I have many times wanted access to data that I knew were buried in the computers or paper records of another health system across town.

As a medical transcriptionist, I’ve shared some of the same frustrations. I’ve typed discharge summaries that included paragraph after paragraph that does nothing more than summarize laboratory data over the course of the patient’s stay. Since medical transcriptionists are paid on volume, I shouldn’t complain – but c’mon, it’s boring and isn’t it already there somewhere? I’m not even talking about data exchange between facilities – this is a discharge summary, summarizing data that was available elsewhere in the same facility!

It’s always interesting to see what Dr. Blumenthal has to say about HITECH and I’ll be following his updates with interest.