Health IT legislation likely in '07

The personal health record movement should keep its focus on the PATIENT ( not administration, not making it easy for the Big-Pharma to hound doctors through their PBMS, not the insurance industry to deny benefits to legit people). The chronological medical record should belong to the patient, should be secured by the patient and made available to appropriate doctors or authorities only with patient's permission. A simple bar coding system or even better secure RFID+biometric card for each patient with a unique national identifier is absolutely necessary before pushing the idea any further. This will ensure that every transaction or test that is done with the patient is available in a central repository. The social security number and mother's maiden name should be eliminated from the records system! Access to vital information which is now freely sold to the big-Pharma by the pharmacies ( and unwittingly by doctors every time they write a prescription) should be stopped. If the health IT initiative is anything but patient-centric there is a need to look at the utility of the scheme very critically. It is possible to keep all the data in public domain for medical and demographic research by stripping any patient or doctor identifying information from such database before opening it to the researchers. The government should put its money into this venture and use the information to help people, not harm them by unleashing lousy programs like Part D, PBM, poorly designed EMR schemes, "managed" competition etc.