The Changing Nature of Data

  • I agree in  some sense that things with data haven't really changed, but the reality is that there is a lot of data that has never been private. It's been seen as a) public domain or b) owned by the doctor, not the patient.

    We do need rules, and we need to debate and think about the framework. For everyone that worries or doesn't like the doctor knowing where their hospital is, there are plenty of others that want the doctor to know for convenience. They just don't want anyone who shouldn't know to know.

    It's a complex and thorny issue, which is made worse by the ease of access, not in a dusty file room in a county office, but from the comfort of your office in another country.

  • That's what I'm getting at... to me, it's always been private. 😉

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • When my wife was treated for cancer, all of her doctors were associated with the same hospital. With the electronic medical records, each of her doctors, surgeon, radiation oncologist, and oncologist, all had access to her records; that was a huge timesaver with not having to enter the same information over and over again. Also, weekly, the cancer team at the hospital hold meetings to discuss their patients care and progress.

  • Except I worked in a doctor's office in high school. The info wasn't private. Doctors were difficult in copying records, and they shared them easily. I saw people giving out info over the phone without HIPAA like checks, I saw people sending copies to various other offices, without any authorization, and constant mistakes.

    No matter what you thought, plenty of this data wasn't private, or treated as such. What we have now is both awareness of how little privacy we have, and of how much people move data around. We also realize how little control we have, which we never had.

     

  • Ralph Hightower wrote:

    When my wife was treated for cancer, all of her doctors were associated with the same hospital. With the electronic medical records, each of her doctors, surgeon, radiation oncologist, and oncologist, all had access to her records; that was a huge timesaver with not having to enter the same information over and over again. Also, weekly, the cancer team at the hospital hold meetings to discuss their patients care and progress.

    My thoughts and prayers and hope things have gone well, Ralph.

    I do think that despite all the hassles, and the EMR issues, this is light years better than the way that medical data moved around 30 years ago. It is amazing how quickly and smoothly we can move data. I've always asked for CDs of records so that if I seek another opinion or go elsewhere, I can move the records in case the interwebs fail.

     

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:

    My thoughts and prayers and hope things have gone well, Ralph. I do think that despite all the hassles, and the EMR issues, this is light years better than the way that medical data moved around 30 years ago. It is amazing how quickly and smoothly we can move data. I've always asked for CDs of records so that if I seek another opinion or go elsewhere, I can move the records in case the interwebs fail.  

    Thank you Steve. After multiple surgeries and radiation, her cancer is gone. Now, it's five years of hormone therapy and monitoring. Another thing about that hospital system and clinics associated with the hospital, every workstation has a badge reader; it takes a swipe of the ID badge to unlock and another swipe to lock the system.

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