Until recently, the problems of medical record storage and management has been largely the concern of hospitals, clinics, and contractors who might work with them to handle the issue. As electronics have evolved and the security of the systems has improved, medical records have been slowly migrating to a new way of doing things. Like everything in the business of medicine, however, the move has been slow and painful.

One of the biggest issues of medical records management has been the rising costs of paper storage and of the paper and printing itself. Environmental concerns have only sharpened the issue. As with many things in this industry, the insurance business has driven many of the changes happening in medical records.

Electronic records have only become any kind of standard in the business in the past handful of years. In fact, many clinics and even small hospitals still do not have an electronic record system and only have the bare minimum required to comply with Medicare and insurance company billing.

This has lead to a lot of patients, who can not only see value in electronic records, but also in their having control over their own medical record storage and use. Thus the new industry of personal health records (PHR) and companies like MedeFile taking the lead in this new arena.

It's amazing to watch how slowly most of the health care industry moves on infrastructure items like electronic records. All of the technology is there and it has been for well over a decade. Yet the snail's pace of adoption continues. Enter any hospital or clinic and you'll still see doctors scribbling on paper couched in folders that get passed from one provider to the next until, ultimately, some unlucky medical records clerk gets to attempt to decipher the hen scratch to put it into the computer for billing and (possibly) for storage.

Are you taking charge of your own medical records? It's to the point where everyone should be.

It's amazing to watch how slowly most of the health care industry moves on infrastructure items like electronic records. All of the technology is there and it has been for well over a decade. Yet the snail's pace of adoption continues. Enter any hospital or clinic and you'll still see doctors scribbling on paper couched in folders that get passed from one provider to the next until, ultimately, some unlucky medical records clerk gets to attempt to decipher the hen scratch to put it into the computer for billing and (possibly) for storage.
Are you taking charge of your own medical records? It's to the point where everyone should be.