Patient access to e-record urgent, HHS panel told

When Regina Holliday needed her husband's electronic health record to help her care for him after a terminal cancer diagnosis it didn't arrive for days, was incorrect, and outdated when he was transferred to another provider. She later used the correct record to care for him until his death. "It's time to stop being incremental," Holliday, now an advocate for patient access to their EHRs, told a panel of the Health and Human Services' Health IT Policy Committee on April 20. "There's too much urgency to get the data to the patient." Dr. Paul Tang, chairman of the committee's meaningful use workgroup, said that was also the upshot of testimony from providers, vendors and other patient/consumer advocates. Patient access to their summary and discharge data is vital because nowadays they are "kicked out" of the hospital to continue recuperation at home, he said.