Why Health Systems Should Promote Patient Access to Medical Data

Why Health Systems Should Promote Patient Access to Medical Data Patient access to medical data can empower them. Easy access is ensured once the data is digitized with the support of a medical record scanning service.

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Healthcare organizations handle crucial health data ranging from lab reports to images, emails and medical records, payment information and so on. All these data needs to be stored safely to create a holistic view of patients, decide on personalized treatment, improve communication between patients and healthcare professionals and ensure better health outcomes. With the help of a medical record scanning service, healthcare data can be transformed into digital format and stored on multiple devices ensuring HIPAA compliance and in keeping with other privacy mandates. When the data is digitized, immediate access to it is made available across a wide range of devices. It also provides a secure patient data sharing option. The rising demand for interoperability has led to the growth of secure healthcare data sharing. Sharing patient information can help healthcare providers reduce readmissions, avoid medication errors and duplicate testing.

Digital advancements are revolutionizing the healthcare industry and they also have the potential for unprecedented empowerment of individual citizens through access to their medical records, and alter them if needed. Now, a number of wearables as well as other personal health data devices are available that note down patient information when the patient sleeps, eats, or goes around. Artificial intelligence solutions allow more personalization for data-driven devices. Experts say that giving patients access to their data would empower them and it changes the overall healthcare. •

Patients Would Become Active Participants in Their Health Care

Allowing patients access to their medical records is a powerful initiative that would encourage patients to be health conscious and stay updated regarding their health status. It could also streamline functions such as receiving blood tests and other prescribed routine assays. When healthcare data is shared with patients, they can be active contributors to a shared care plan rather than being passive and simply following instructions. For example, if you are a type 2 diabetes patient and if your treating physician keeps on talking about managing your HbA1c, or some other medical parameter, this conversation will be difficult and you may not understand anything.

Accessing your own medical data enables you to detect trends and actually view the progress that you are making. •

Preparing for Preventive Care

A fully connected data environment strengthens the patient’s voice and facilitates greater focus on preventive care models. If patients can update their own medical records, it provides a granular view of their lifestyle and this helps physicians detect potential risks before they develop into a major life-threatening condition.

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Clinicians Can Observe Patterns

A major advantage of patient-reported data is that clinicians and researchers can use it to study patterns and use those to predict, diagnose, manage and treat illnesses. This could in turn ensure improved patient care and outcomes.

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Caregivers/researchers Can Focus on the Most Troublesome Symptoms

Opinions and views of patients and their caregivers can be recorded in the data collection,

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progression of a health condition and the impact it has on the patient and his/her family.

Moreover, when personal experiences associated with a condition are communicated to researchers/clinicians, it would help them focus on a particular symptom that is very disruptive to the patient’s/family’s quality of life.

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Data Silos Can Be Broken Down:

When patients have easy access to their own health data, they can help in breaking down data barriers that exist across the healthcare spectrum. This would facilitate data sharing and care coordination.

Challenges Should Be Effectively Addressed Digitization of patient data enables easy sharing of data and care coordination, but it creates a major challenge for organizations about protecting and securing patient data.

Compliance with HIPAA is a must but it doesn’t guarantee protection of data. Cyber security is a major concern as malicious hackers modify their attacks constantly and make them more intricate and difficult to thwart. To ensure patient data security, solutions must begin with the human factor in data security. Security of patient information that moves within the organization and also between entities and business associates and vendors is important. New threats and organizational changes happen every day. Modern security technologies are highly advanced, and if properly implemented and maintained by trained staff, healthcare organizations can ensure data security. Stringent data security policies are important to give patients the confidence to go digital with their data.

The global healthcare reimbursement landscape should expand to a more value-based care model, where preventing illness is valued as highly as treating it. Advanced technologies like machine learning will help improve health care by flagging health anomalies that require proper investigation, but reorganisation and the creation of new

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digital health monitoring roles will be needed too. Similarly, proper governance of patient access to medical data is also crucial.

It is important for healthcare organizations to be able to have a strong infrastructure, and the right combination of regulations, security measures and digital transformation policy to ensure a better output. Digitization of medical data involves conversion of paper-based medical data into digital format for better access, management and storage of data. A professional medical document scanning company will help you convert all data into the desired digital formats.

www.managedoutsource.com

(800) 670 2809