The US government mandated that all patients must have online access to their medical records by 2010.
In a recent study conducted by Chicago-based market research firm Synovate for Kaiser Permanente, most Americans said their top healthcare preferences were accessing their medical records and scheduling medical appointments online.
Kaiser Permanente is incorporating these features and others. Members in Georgia can now e-mail their doctor’s office with questions, view lab test results and review past office visit information online. They also can view or cancel future appointments.
Kaiser Permanente plans to add future services online such as scheduling appointments, viewing immunization and allergy records. Members can also set up reminders for preventive care screenings.
Kaiser Permanente began converting its 12 metro Atlanta facilities to EMR in the past year. Georgia was the seventh state to install EMR within Kaiser Permanente’s healthcare system.
The service debuted on August 5 at the Kaiser Permanente medical facility in Gwinnett county, Georgia. The health plan says it was one of the first in the US to implement EMR in 2003. It’s in the final stages of rolling out the program to its more than 8.5 million members nationwide.
Because of EMR, Kaiser Permanente says it was first to discover the Vioxx problem, which helped Merck voluntarily pull the drug from store shelves while it researched the situation.
