PHRs face serious growing pains

In theory, PHRs seem like a nifty idea, allowing patients to make their clinical and administrative information available to any provider that can access a web browser. Doctors and hospitals save the $30K to $50K per head price tag, and patients get free access to their records. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Well, at times, not so much. In practice, Google is already facing some growing pains related to its Google Health product. These include errors leaving patients with data suggesting they could be on death's door, according to recent news coverage.

Why would such PHR data face blemishes? Well, for one thing, critics say, some of the data is drawn from insurance claims databases, which are rife with errors arising from the day-to-day coding process.

"Claims data is notoriously inaccurate and notoriously incomplete with respect to an expression of the problems a person has," said Dr. David Kibbe, a senior technology adviser to the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Can this problem be fixed? Without a doubt--even critics admit that. The question is whether PHRs will even be worth having after the clinical and administrative process of pulling claims data into the PHR gets completed (at a cost of hundreds of millions). So far, this is looking like a pretty questionable proposition, I'd say.

To learn more about PHR issues:
- read this Boston Globe piece

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