Personal Health Monitor III - PHM Benefits

The benefits of having a personal Health Monitor include:
(1) improved communication with your physician(s) and other healthcare providers,
(2) key documentation to both prevent common medical errors and/or prevail in financial or legal disputes should they occur, and
(3) better safeguard of personal information.

Many individual’s are reluctant to divulge their most personal and sensitive information “over the Internet”, no matter how “secure” a vendor promises to make a site. Many personal health record web sites have gone out of business in the past few years (including hospital and HMO-based solutions). Finally a PHM does not limit you to illness and disease management. You will also be able to track physical fitness programs, dieting, and personal notes about your over-all wellness.

However the most important benefit from creating a PHM relates to quality of care and prevention of medical mistakes.

The Institute of Medicine's 2001 landmark book, Crossing the Quality Chasm, delineated 10 "design rules" for improving care. The success of six of these 10 "rules" depends directly on patients' involvement in their care. A recent reanalysis of the U.S. "ecology of medical care" suggests that although 80 percent of patients are experiencing medical concerns at home, only 30 percent are seeking care.

Recognizing the importance of having relevant information available to patients for management of their medical conditions, David Brailer, the former national coordinator for health information technology in the Department of Health and Human Services, made personal health records a cornerstone in the national strategy for health information technology. Since leaving the government, he is working with the State of California to establish a "venture fund" for seeding personal health information projects.

Thus a personal Health Monitor offers a number of potential benefits to both you and your physicians: These include:

• Empowerment. PHMs allows you to verify the information in your medical record and monitor health data yourself (very useful in chronic disease management). You control who, when, and what information is given to care providers and in what form.

• Improved doctor-patient-provider communication. PHMs improve communication between you and clinicians, allow documentation of interactions between you and care providers and allow you to generate timely information for your doctor.

• Improved quality of care. PHMs enable continuous, comprehensive care with better coordination between patients, physicians and other providers.

• More efficient delivery of care. PHMs help avoid duplicative testing and unnecessary services. They provide more efficient communication between patients and physicians (e.g., avoiding congested office phones).

• Better safeguards on health information privacy. By giving patients control of access to their records, PHMs offer more selectivity in sharing of personal health information.

So what information should a PHM contain?

The actual information content of a PHM should include information explicitly defined by the ASTM International E2369-05, standard specification for for what the medical community calls a Continuity of Care Record (CCR)

The CCR standard's main elements create a snapshot of a patient's health data. An archive consists of multiple snapshots as well as personally sensitive data.
• Personal and demographic information
• Emergency contacts
• Insurance information
• Problem lists
• Medications/allergies
• Immunizations
• Labs and tests
• Hospitalizations/surgeries
• Advanced directive form
• Spiritual affiliation/considerations
• Care plan

Source: ASTM International. ASTM E2369-05, standard specification for Continuity of Care Record (CCR). Available at: http://www.astm.org.