Joseph Rugg's Health Law Blog

“We do everything online, book airline tickets, paying bills,” said Tupelo family physician Dr. Brad Crosswhite, who helped pilot the North Mississippi Medical Clinic portal in 2012. “Why not handle medicine the same way?”

The secure, free services give access to medication histories, visit summaries, lab results and reminders about upcoming appointments. On most hospital portals, patients can see their discharge instructions. With the clinic portals, patients can request refills and communicate securely with the staff.

“The ultimate goal is to have patients more engaged with their care.”

This is from an online article from InsuranceNewsNet.com: Online access: Portals connect patients with their medical info.

Yes, of course, this is a good thing.  But couldn’t it be better.  It’s time we stopped being so apoplectic about privacy and security, and more focused on how to get better patient engagement in their care.  HIPAA has run a muck and clearly makes things unintentionally harder than they need to be.  As with most government regulations, compliance is more costly and disruptive than the problem being addressed.  No one disputes the value of keeping healthcare records private, but that goal needs to be balanced against the real goal of improving healthcare.