RHetoric

The message is simple: you would ask your waiter a few questions about the menu; so why wouldn’t you ask your doctor a few questions about your care?

I was talking health reform with my primary care physician last week, and she made an interesting comment:  “One of my biggest frustrations with healthcare is that most of my patients just expect me to tell them what to do.”

Whoa - this was not a criticism of Medicare, or Obama, or insurers, or anyone else in the supply chain - it was directed at the patients themselves!

As patients, we tend to think of our primary care physicians as the managers of our care.  But in truth, they are simply contributors.  Our insurance companies, specialists, and even friends and family are all contributors.  This can be frustrating and even vexing, but it is a golden opportunity for health reformers, and for IT.

If IT can make medical information more accessible, portable, and personalized, perhaps we patients can be empowered to ask informed questions and contribute to decision-making about our care.  We have a long way to go.  But some of the emerging tools within Google Health and HealthVault are encouraging.

Even if a patient never maintains a personal health record, asking a few questions at the doctor’s office could vastly improve the quality of one’s care.

Do you remember when, as you researched your first online travel purchase, it dawned on you that the vast amount of information at your fingertips was power? Or the moment you realized the iPod reinvented your relationship with music? Another of these moments is upon us, and it could add several years to your life.

Until now, we had to rely on our doctors to recall all of the latest medical research and guidelines and deftly apply them to our unique personal cases – usually in a seven-minute office visit. It’s simply impossible.

But doctor’s office dynamics are about to change. Google just launched a personal health record service for anyone to use. Go to Google Health and create a simple profile for you or a loved one. Then run the “Drug interactions” assessment offered by our client, Anvita Health. It’s the equivalent of enlisting a king’s army of physicians, specialists, pharmacists and researchers to work furiously and exclusively on your behalf to generate personalized medical recommendations – in the blink of an eye.

This feedback is completely actionable. Use it to be more proactive with your family’s healthcare, or to have more effective conversations with your doctor. It might even save you from a dangerous medical error.

Best of all, it’s free. We hope you can find a few minutes to try it for yourself.

For the past eight years I have been working in and around health IT companies that profess they bring the power of modern computing to healthcare. In many cases, these claims are sort of true. The digitization of health information has led to a number of improvements on the clinical and administrative sides, but little difference has been seen by the patient.

Enter the personal health record, or PHR. About three years ago, I became intimately familiar with PHRs when I pitched an early PHR provider the services of my old PR firm. At the time, users could enter their information online, or give their provider the fax number and coversheet for faxing records into the PHR system. But that seemed to be the extent of the service, an electronic repository.

Well, things have definitely changed. Because of the work RH Strategic is doing with Anvita Health, I’ve become very aware of the recent launch of Google Health. To fully understand the system and its capabilities, I took my mother through the system. The results were nothing short of remarkable.

Entering the information was simple, especially with the ability to download prescriptions from Medco and CVS. Armed with her latest test results, as well as a history of her past diagnoses, we populated the PHR. After entering her health information, the side menu bar instantly showed a red exclamation mark with information on potential conflicts between her medications. With this kind of feedback, my mother can now call her doctor to discuss her options and find out if she needs a new prescription. After waiting eight years for health IT that can really change the way people improve their health, I have now seen that technology, and it is AWESOME!