Healthcare Scene is on LinkedIn

As you may know, this site is part of John Lynn’s new Healthcare Scene blog network. In the spirit of building a community, John has started a Healthcare Scene LinkedIn group to promote the network and his flagship EMR and HIPAA blog. Join up and start networking with us.

Last week on that EMR and HIPAA blog, John ran a poll asking readers about their experiences with personal health records. (I’ve long been a critic of the “untethered” PHR that’s not connected to a specific healthcare organization or EMR. An empty PHR doesn’t help patients, while physicians aren’t likely to use one not directly tied to an EMR because it doesn’t fit their workflow and they often can’t trust the data inside.)

Not surprisingly, 60 percent of the 53 respondents had never started a PHR. Another 17 percent had created one but haven’t added much data to it. Just 13 percent say they have PHRs that are mostly updated.

It’s an unscientific survey, but I’m sure usage among readers of a health IT blog are far more likely than the general public to have or use a PHR. Despite what some vendors or consumer-facing publications might have you believe, PHRs are a tiny, almost insignificant segment of health IT right now.