Personal Health Records: Advantages and Disadvantages

Personal Health Records are records of your personal health information stored on a system. They provide easier and faster access for patients to their information, which they can manage and control to their liking.

Advantages

• you can limit who can access your PHR online
• you can limit how much of your personal information people can access
• many different types of people can access them (i.e. your physicians, pharmacists, pharmacies, insurance companies, etc.)
• many different forms as website ones are stored on a secure, reliable server created by one of your personal health care providers
• Also, when a new doctor asks a patient for his medication history but he can’t remember it, he can go access the patient’s PHR online with his password and find it during an appointment (Ensley, Kibbe, Linares, & Colorafi, 2006, p. 57-62).

Disadvantages

• there is still no federal law right now stopping people from sharing or selling personal medical records to any marketing agencies or other 3^rd parties without the patient’s consent
• companies often take patient data without their consent and the data is shared without taking out all unique identifiers in it that reveal a patient’s personal information (“Protecting Patient,” 1999, p. 1)
• It costs around $30,000 to implement an electronic record system in a health care facility
• all someone needs is the patient's password to access their entire PHR online as there is no furthur security protection
• the privacy settings in a Personal Health Record have not been fully developed yet

References

1.) Ensley, S., Kibbe, D.C., Linares, A., & Colorafi, K. (2006). An introduction to

personal health records. Family Practice Management, 13 (5), 57-62. American Academy of Family Physicians. 2011, March 1. Retrieved from http://www.aafp.org/fpm/2006/0500/p57.html?sms_ss=blogger
&at_xt=4d0520772e53d44c%2C0.

2.) (1999, November 1). Protecting Patient Privacy. 2011, March 2. Retrieved from

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/01/opinion/protecting-patient-privacy.html?src=pm.