Share My Record
The Affordable Care Act created significant incentives for hospitals and other providers to transition to electronic medical records (EMR) so it is rare today to see paper medical records. Epic is the company which is fairly dominant in the hospital field so many of our viewers likely already have an online MyChart account through Epic.
We want to draw everyone’s attention to the very helpful “Share My Record” feature. It’s probably best to view our video to see this (or better still login to your MyChart account) but you go to the top left of the screen to “Menu,” press “Menu” and you will see a number of headings. Scroll down to “Sharing” and the subheading below it is “Share My Record.” This feature allows someone to provide access to another’s record. This is particularly useful if you are caring for an elderly relative or have children 18 or over who need you involved in their care, but is also helpful to share medical information on a one-time basis to a provider who may not have access to MyChart.
Share Everywhere is another feature that can allow access to providers who are not on the Epic system. If providers can easily access the results for recent tests you have had, for example, you should not need to have these ordered again. This will save you time and money and help the broader issue of duplication of services in the fee-for-service medical environment we are in.
Anyway, this topic is not directly related to our usual topics concerning healthcare coverage, but we are so excited to see the improvements in effectively sharing medical information and records across software platforms that we wanted to share this information as widely as possible!