Patient Engagement and Medical Records Access

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Posted By: Roberta Mullin June 14, 2012

Patient engagement and empowerment is not anti-doctor

If you missed Tuesday’s MU Live! with our special guest Dave deBronkart aka e-Patient Dave you can sign up to download the podcast here.

During the show our host, Jim Tate, and Dave had what can best be described as a “fireside chat” about patient engagement and medical records access. His story of how he became a leading advocate and voice for patient engagement and participatory medicine is fascinating. There were so many great sound bites and points made in their conversation that pulling out a couple to share wasn’t easy. I’ve paraphrased a few here:

Patient engagement and empowerment is not anti-doctor…I was saved by great doctors. It’s just that today patients can generally contribute a lot more than they could a generation ago.

ARRA/HITECH codified patient rights to their medical records…this is driven home in proposed Stage 2 requirements on patient portals.

We’re in the midst of a cultural shift here…we must invite people on both sides of the table [patient and clinician] to this discussion.

Given the current state of the U.S. Healthcare system the human cost of not going electronic is too great.

On the show Dave talked about what he calls the “e-patient manifesto” that changed the course of his life, a 120-page white paper available on e-patients.net. If you do nothing else read the Foreword provided by Pew Internet & The American Life Project on how their own conclusions are in line with this white paper. Note: this white paper is from 2007. Imagine how these same conclusions look today five years later?

You may want to also check out ParticipatoryMedicine.org and Dave’s own blog ePatientDave.com. Read his latest post The Magic Incantation.

And check out Dave’s most recent speech last month at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. about the power of information to improve the effectiveness of medical care.

You can sign up to download the recorded podcast here.  The show also re-broadcasts this week each day at 2 pm Eastern on HealthcareNOWradio.com.