From the other side of the table, as patients that were very regularly ill and bouncing between medical professionals, EMR were a godsend.
For instance in vacation at the other end of the country, we lost an Anapen with a luggage mishanded at the station, though we had a spare but we actually didn't (was in the same bag...). We went to the closest doctor, showed the insurance card and they got access to the allergologist's diagnosis and original prescription, gave us a new one with a memo in the file, and done.
Same way having two generalists looking at us, one near my work and another near home wasn't an issue. At no point did we have to bring folders full of papers to explain long treatment histories etc. (it still helps to have the key files, in particular scans)
I moved away and everything is back in small silos at each doctor/clinic, and it's a real PITA.
I'm truely sad it's such a pain on the care giving side, because there's so much potential and I think it merits investing a lot to get something decent. It's such an important part of our forseable future.
The problem is that in the US, many EMR's don't automatically connect to each other.
If you're going from a hospital owned by one chain (say, Hospital Corporation of America) to another hospital owned by the same corporation, then yes, it works like you said and doctors have access to your historical data. But God forbid that you should ever end up at a hospital owned by a different corporation, because then you have to call the Medical Records department to release the data, which often takes a couple business days to go through. The system doesn't work if it isn't open, and unfortunately, our patient privacy law (HIPAA) is often used by corporations as an excuse to silo their data away and prevent others from accessing it.
The 21st Century Cures Act was signed 8 years ago (but compliance was only required as of 2023). It states that Healthcare Institutions (& EHR developers) must provide a mechanism for patients to access their health records electronically in a standardized format (FHIR).
It's what allowed my open-source startup Fasten Health to even exist. I was diagnosed with a chronic condition, and wanted a way to store my health records privately on my own devices. A bit of luck and a POC later, I was able to confirm that patients can access their own records with little-to-no barriers.
It doesn't matter that I've had 6 different insurance companies over my career, or that I've visited more than 2 dozen different healthcare institutions, as a Patient we have the unique ability to collate and generate our own longitudinal health record.
Cool, does your product fall into the category that they call "patient passports"?
Also, I looked into your website, and it looks like you have the https://www.fastenhealth.com, but you forgot to register the subdomain without the www. I remember having to configure that the last time I deployed on Netlify. Also, I was gonna try the Careers link on the website but it looks like it's a dummy link, which is fine if it's intentional.
From the other side of the table, as patients that were very regularly ill and bouncing between medical professionals, EMR were a godsend.
For instance in vacation at the other end of the country, we lost an Anapen with a luggage mishanded at the station, though we had a spare but we actually didn't (was in the same bag...). We went to the closest doctor, showed the insurance card and they got access to the allergologist's diagnosis and original prescription, gave us a new one with a memo in the file, and done.
Same way having two generalists looking at us, one near my work and another near home wasn't an issue. At no point did we have to bring folders full of papers to explain long treatment histories etc. (it still helps to have the key files, in particular scans)
I moved away and everything is back in small silos at each doctor/clinic, and it's a real PITA.
I'm truely sad it's such a pain on the care giving side, because there's so much potential and I think it merits investing a lot to get something decent. It's such an important part of our forseable future.