Reduce Risk of Medical Errors, Improve Safety and Become their Health Advocate

Purchase a Membership for your parent or loved one!

In today's world, it's common for family members to live in different cities and states. Sometimes it's the parents who move away from the place where they raised their family, perhaps to retire to a warmer or more appealing climate. However, it is often the children who move away because of job opportunities. Everything seems to be fine, but then something happens. A doctor calls in the middle of the night to say that your father who is 3,000 miles away has fallen and has become unconscious. He was taken by ambulance to the local hospital. The doctor states that there is no available information about health history, medications or allergies. It’s lucky you talked your dad into carrying your phone number in his wallet. You seem to recall a conversation in the past about your father’s doctors and the medications he is taking….what did he say?

There are a number of steps you can take to help improve the safety of a parent or loved one. These steps can actually augment independence and reduce frustration and worry associated with not knowing how to help out. Make the task of organizing your parents’ health information more manageable.  MyHealthArchive’s personal health record and Concierge Service can help to anticipate unforeseen events which can help prevent medication errors and adverse events due to duplications or omission of health services.

• Sit down with your parents and loved ones.  Have a heart to heart talk about what could happen in the event of an unforeseen medical emergency if other family members could not be reached and no health information was immediately available to physicians who must make important decisions about diagnoses and treatment.
• Subscribe to MyHealthArchive for your parents, children and other loved ones.  MyHealthArchive gives everyone flexibility in determining who has access to what information. In other words, your parent grants full access or partial access, depending upon circumstances. As the child of an elderly parent, you may want to obtain full permission from your parent in order to have full access to your parent’s archive. This will allow you the ability to assist with compiling health history, contact information and determining whether copies of medical records should be obtained. As a parent of a child, you will need to have full access to a child’s archive so that you can keep important health history up to date.
• Obtain the required permission for access to an archive.  You will need user name and password which you obtained for or from a parent or loved one.  After logging in, you will want to take the time to sit down and carefully go over each section of MyHealthArchive together to be sure that the information is accurate and complete. Be sure to consider all of the family and friends who should be contacted in an emergency, as well as any of the physicians who may be involved in care and treatment. Also consider which family members should have access to which information in the event that you are absent and others may need to be called upon to make decisions or communicate with health care providers in your absence.
• Determine whether to obtain medical records from hospitals or physicians offices which can clearly define clinical diagnoses, treatment decisions or prognoses.  In some circumstances, having a written report, progress record, radiology or laboratory result can provide lifesaving information or can prevent duplication of tests which have already been performed.

If you make a determination that it would be beneficial to gather medical records which can be uploaded into a parent or loved one’s archive, you can contact the physician’s office or the medical record department of the hospital to obtain the proper and required release forms. In general, most physicians and hospitals charge a fee to make and send copies of medical records. You will need to submit that fee before the records are released.

Since hospital records tend to be more voluminous in nature, you may be able to reduce your costs for copying focusing on specific aspects of medical records where new diagnoses were made new treatments were initiated, surgical procedures were performed, or complications occurred. For those circumstances, it may be appropriate to request copies of operative or procedure reports, histories and physicals, consultation reports, diagnostic studies and discharge summaries from hospital medical records.

From physician’s offices and clinics, you may need to obtain diagnostic laboratory and x-ray reports, medication lists and recent office progress notes to stay abreast of current management strategies for medical problems.

• Use MyHealthArchive’s Concierge Service if you are short on time. MyHealthArchive provides a Concierge Service, which, according to a fee schedule, can assist with the entire process from start to finish, and can participate, as requested, in updating the archive of a parent or loved one. MyHealthArchive’s Concierge Service can work with you, your parent or loved one,  to determine  which records should be ordered, obtain appropriate authorizations for release of medical records, contact physicians’ offices and hospitals to request the records, and even upload medical records into an archive, if you request the MyHealthArchive Concierge Service to do so.

Beyond updating the health history and medical records of a parent or loved one, it is important to take a proactive approach to health and wellness. In many cases, a regimen may be prescribed to reduce the risk of further illness or improve well-being. Regimens can range from dietary modifications, exercise programs, monitoring blood pressures, blood sugars, heart rate, and many other parameters which are indicators of health. You can help keep track of progress by recording results using MyGraphs. These graphs, notes and logs can be shared at each physician visit.

When you help a parent or loved one create their own personal health record through MyHealthArchive, you have helped to ensure that the right information can be made available to the right health care providers at the right time. MyHealthArchive can help a parent or loved one every day by recording progress and results of treatment.  MyHealthArchive augments communication with health care providers when there is a medical emergency and even when traveling internationally. By helping a parent or loved one compile their own health and wellness record, you have effectively helped provide peace of mind and the ability of your parent or loved one to become the center of their own health care.

Purchase a Membership for your parent or loved one!