Question

Case Study: A 65-year-old woman was just been diagnosed with Stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She was informed of this diagnosis in her primary care physician's office. She leaves her physician's office and goes home to review all of her tests and lab results with her family. She goes home and logs into her PHR. She is only able to pull up a portion of her test results. She calls her physician's office with this concern. The office staff discussed that she had part of her lab work completed at a lab not connected to the organization, part was completed at the emergency room, and part was completed in the lab that is part of the doctor's office organization.

The above scenario might be a scenario that you have commonly worked with in clinical practice. For many reasons, patients often receive healthcare from multiple organizations that might have different systems.

As you review this scenario, reflect and answer these questions for this discussion.

• What are the pros and cons of the situation in the case study?
• What safeguards are included in patient portals and PHRs to help patients and healthcare professionals ensure safety?
• Do you agree or disagree with the way that a patient obtains Personal Health Records (PHRs)?
• What are challenges for patients that do not have access to all of the PHRs? Remember, only portions of the EHRs are typically included in the PHRs.

Answer 1

In this situation patient had done reports by her own known laboratory.it is good and she did early investigation and come to diagnosis earlier.but on another side her physician will not consider her reports as it is not part of doctor's office organization.she might have to go for further investigation. For safeguards in patient portals and PHRs to help patients and healthcare professionals.A list of affiliated laboratory should be linked with PHR so this situation will not occur. I agree with the way that a patient obtains her personal health records because it is patient' s personal records and reports and patient has right to do by her wish in any laboratory. All the health institutes and laboratory should not be linked with EHR and PHR .PHR will not accept all data which patient wants to enter in Portal because it might have limitations in this.