Patient Portals

Even as organizations work toward transitioning from paper to electronic medical records, the landscape of health care continues to shift all around us. One of the ongoing evolutions in Health Care is managing patient access to information.

Traditionally, medical organizations provide hard copy records to patients upon an exchange of a Release Of Information, or ROI. The patient does this by walking in, signing a document, and then the doctor or hospital provides specific records from the chart to either the patient, or another provider.

The recent push for electronic records ads a new dimension to this process, as more and more organizations create medical records in purely electronic formats. This creates both opportunities, as well as challenges, as both organizations and consumers try and figure out how this dawning age of electronic medical records can improve accessibility to information, manage privacy, and improve quality of care - while at the same time maintaining the highl level of simplicity offered by a traditional paper chart.

For a great discussion on Group Health's Patient Portal, a MCO in Washington State, check out this Health Care Informatics article -- Patient Portals