March 9, 2011
Healthcare Scene is on LinkedIn
Written by: Neil Versel
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.
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2 responses to "Healthcare Scene is on LinkedIn"
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PHRs are a great idea with no future in the current health care paradigm. The current customer attitude is “Health care is free, it’s my right, and I’ll sue if it isn’t done right.” Given that attitude, why would a customer bother to get to know they “product” they’re buying? Health care isn’t free, it isn’t a right, and most lawsuits fail, but the attitude prevails nonetheless, because the government, insurers and health care activists are pushing that perception and the press has bought into it.
The most potentially active market for PHRs is the cash only small practice, in which patients are actually incentivized to get involved in their care choices. Primary care is seeing huge growth in cash only practices in percentage terms, but the absolute numbers remain small for now.
Only time will tell whether the cash only business will achieve critical mass before the government attempts to shut it down.
I agree that PHRs are a tiny piece, obviously. But I think the potential for growth is huge. I was recently having some discussions with the folks at http://www.emix.com (disclosure: they are a client) about features they will soon be adding to their service that shares medical images and reports in the cloud. PHRs are very much in their thinking, and I’m sure in the thinking of many others in this and similar spaces.