“The guidance released yesterday is an important step forward in helping patients exercise their right to access their health information under HIPAA, including electronically. Our cadre of volunteer ‘tracer’ patients has found that, unfortunately, confusion surrounding HIPAA persists and often means that patients don’t get the kind of access to their health care information they need,” said the campaign’s coordinator Christine Bechtel.

“This kind of innovation is a positive and promising step toward a health care system that rewards value instead of volume and treats patients and families as partners in health care decision-making,” stated Debra L. Ness, President of the National Partnership for Women & Families.

Kentucky has the right approach, said Christine Bechtel, a coordinator with the national campaign Get My Health Data, which is working to increase consumer demand for their own medical records. “It’s such an outdated view that patients should be charged for health data that is so essential to their care,” Bechtel said. “We have to shift the mentality around patient health information” so it’s no longer looked at as competitive information or a line item.

Therefore, hospitals must work even harder today to be prepared for every patient who walks through the door, says Mark Savage, director of health IT policy and programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group

The Consumer Partnership for eHealth, led by the National Partnership for Women & Families, has pushed for minimum standards in electronic health records to ensure they collect enough information on patient ethnicity and other factors to inform care. It’s also demanded that records be made available to patients in multilingual formats that explain jargon in layman’s terms, said Mark Savage, the director of health information technology policy and programs.

This blog post by National Partnership President Debra L. Ness reminds parents and caregivers about the value of health data access especially during back-to-school season.

Health information technology plays a critical role in national efforts to reform health care, says Mark Savage, director of health information technology policy and programs at the National Partnership of Women and Families, a nonprofit advocacy organization in the District of Columbia that leads the Consumer Partnership for eHealth.

“These systems can lead to better health, better care and better value for people across the country,” says Savage, noting that many consumers want online access to their records.