Yeah I jettisoned the bulk of my rant, but in the past, some online access medical records systems actually worked very well, but were scrapped or taken down later on because of harsher laws about health record access.
For instance, in 1999 you could access your patients' laboratory results, digitized medical images and ECGs, and chart notes from home if you had a standard VPN login account for the university health network. In 2004, that system was shut down and it was back to the drawing board due to HIPAA. It was argued, a student or doctor could log in from home, leave the computer running while he made a sandwich, and his wife or a friend or an insurance adjuster who happened to be in the same room could read and lift the records from the computer before the automatic logout function hid them.
Meanwhile, it was back to paper charts and phone calls to track down elusive but crucial data. Chart not in the rack? Lab not coming to the phone? You couldn't even know if a patient was admitted or not, let alone what their health issue was.
Some third party companies are working on digitizing health records. They will collect a hefty fee for disbursing any health information, except in bulk (e.g. insurance companies). So it is not yet realistic for patients to request and obtain their health records, even if they are already computerized. If they want, they must request in writing with a waiver and $30-75 for processing and printing fee. The result is, of course, paper printouts of records, not electronic copies. This is probably OK for laboratory test numbers, but say you wanted to get a copy of MRI images from when you had back surgery? Fuggeddaboutit. Fax-quality crappy linty shit comes in the mail.
Crunkatog on ESO
Bart331 balance suggestion: aztec: remove civ
Voltiguer: Ender, Sioux in 1.04 will be a top civ, no matter how many layers of Sioux goggles you put on
schildpad on Elephants: ...their mansabdar unit sucks so hard it looks like a black hole
Crunkatog on Steam.[This message has been edited by As_Saffah (edited 11-09-2010 @ 02:44 PM).]