Electronic Health Records: Medical Records at Your Fingertips
Keeping track of medical records can be difficult, especially if the information is in multiple places. This challenge gets more difficult when there are several doctors to address multiple concerns.
Insurance providers, family doctors and other health care providers maintain their own medical records, but maintaining a personal health record of past appointments, test results, prescriptions, and more will make it easier to share information among doctors and family members.
A personal health record is simply a collection of information about your and your family’s health. Paper records a great, but the drawback is that you rarely have those papers when you need them.
A My Life & Wishes account makes it easy to create an electronic personal health record. You decide what and how much to record. In general, it should include anything that helps you, your family, and your health care providers manage your health.
- My family’s medical history (illnesses, blood types)
- My medical history (chronic health problems, blood type)
- Immunization records
- Allergies, including drug allergies
- Dates and results of tests and screenings
- Prescriptions, supplements, dosages, and how long you’ve taken them
- Doctors
- Clinics
- Pharmacy
- Emergency contacts
- Copies of health care directives, such as a living will
After all the information has gathered, it doesn’t take long to record this information into my account. Once it’s all in there, it’s simply a matter of keeping it up-to-date. You can even share this part of your My Life & Wishes account with trusted family members.
Having a personal health record can be a lifesaver, literally. In an emergency you can quickly give emergency personnel vital information, such as a disease you’re being treated for, previous surgeries or hospitalizations, medications you take, drug allergies, and how to contact your family doctor. It also enables you to:
- Make the most of doctor visits. Be ready with questions for your doctor and information you want to share, such as blood pressure readings since your last visit.
- Get organized. Track appointments, vaccinations, and preventive or screening services, such as mammograms. In fact, a Mayo Clinic study found that when parents used personal health records for their children, the children were more likely to get their preventive well-child checkups on time.
