Electronic Health records are incredibly valuable to the medical field. This is due to the fact that all past visitations including summaries about these visitations, immunizations, prescribed medications, lab results, diagnostic tests, past medical history, surgical history, etc are at a clinician’s fingertips. These records are typically organized in a manner that facilitates the navigation of the provider to find the information necessary to provide quality care. From the presentation, we had learned that Maine is one of the most innovative states with the ability to share this information among facilities. I believe this is the direction in which healthcare should proceed. The ability to follow a patient throughout their lifespan without gaps in their care. Thus, providers can act upon preventative education, in turn, preventing diseases such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.
With this knowledge the hope is more states will follow suit, to continue this ideology of sharing records with facilities that this patient visits in order to provide quality care to these patients. That currently in some states the responsibility is upon the patient to remember to notify their provider about visitations to an emergency room, etc. This would benefit their primary care provider as well as all facilities which the patient visits outside of their own facility. Thus, enabling the providers who care for the patient to view the patient in a holistic view and improving the quality of care which they receive. The question now is how do we advocate for this implementation nationwide? As this not only benefits the providers but the patient as well. Epic has initiated this ideology with their program Care Everywhere which enables facilities that utilize Epic to share patient medical records to provide quality care anywhere this patient visits as long as that facility utilizes Epic. However, the issue is not all facilities utilize Epic. That being said there is more to be done in order for this implementation to be done nationwide so if a patient, for instance, is from Maine but visits a facility in Colorado this facility can access their medical record as well. People travel, and we need to think about how we can benefit our patients in all aspects of life.
