Health portals - are they a help or a hindrance to health and privacy?

My local providers (North Georgia Health System) did much the same thing last October. All providers moved to a single shared platform and all of my records are available to any and every provider.

That’s not a bad thing, because before this change I was carrying paperwork from place to place.

However, I don’t like the coerciveness of it. They send you an email telling you to log into the portal to pay your bill. WHy not just email the bill? Instead of telling you what time the appointment is, they make you log onto the porter and click on the calendar.

This may be good for the medical providers, but as a consumer, it sucks.

I was impressed some years ago when in England we had to take my MIL for an emergency visit to the hospital. They had all her records online and the intake was very efficient.

On the one hand, it makes things consistent across the medical group. My cardiologist sees all my rpescriptions, as does my Internist, and another specialist. Because of that, they all know what meds I am on, and also they all pay attention to my blood pressure.

But it gets worrisome when systems get hacked, plus it makes it difficult to switch Doctors.

They are not mandated by the ACA.

Personally I LOVE having a patient portal. I love being able to get something simple done like getting an Rx refilled or scheduling an appointment without having to play phone tag. As a person who has to communicate with her doctors often, they have made my life much easier.

I understand the idea of security concerns, but I doubt that the portal itself makes your info any less secure; the switch to electronic health records (which was mandated by the HITECH Act) was what resulted in your health data becoming digitized and thus hackable. However, one can hardly argue that paper records were better. EHRs still have room for a LOT of improvement but they were a necessary step forward.

I love mine. I can ask my doctor a question and not have to pay for an office visit. I can change medications, no office visit. I can see my test results in a matter of days and not kill a tree to do so. I don’t see any drawbacks personally.

I like the patient portals and the ability to get lab results almost immediately without an office visit. What does frustrate me is having to fill out the forms again and again at every office visit.

I figure it is only a matter of time before the information is hacked. It’s inevitable. I’m not sure what the bad guys will do with it. Maybe they’ll sell the info to life insurance companies?