Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Patient Consent Management Wizard

Here is a presentation on a consent management solution
Managing consent Preferences by John Halamka. Also, check out John's blog
"The basic idea is that a Consent Wizard could be created on the web to record and transmit all patient privacy preferences. Such an electronic consent document could be stored on the patent's personal health record, at their insurer, or at a third party secure website."

With healthcare data sharing it is important to understand the need for allowing patient to decide what health information they are willing to permit their various healthcare to view. For example, a patient may not want their dermatologist to have access to any mental health information etc. There needs to be an electronic way to manage this. My fear is however, we may overwhelm our patients with even more responsibility. Already in our office, new patients are given a packet of HIPAA related documents, "Assignment of Benefit document: etc. I really believe the majority of patients do not know what they are signing. Kind of like the way I felt 2 weeks ago when we closed on our new home.