Medical Records In The Cloud
Would you feel comfortable knowing your doctor was using medical cloud hosting? Practice Fusion offers just that, a place doctors can store their patients' medical records for free. According to the San Francisco-based company, 150,000 health care providers are currently using it for their 60 million patients' medical records. Practice Fusion recently announced the addition of a new service, Patient Fusion, where people can schedule an appointment with any doctor currently signed up with Practice Fusion.
The medical cloud hosting company has partnered with pharmacies and lab testing companies to bring personalised advertisements to health records.
Medical Records In The Cloud: How It Works
Let's say a doctor opens up the medical records of a diabetic. A banner may appear at the top of the screen. This banner would advertise specific drugs or tests. The drug labs pay Practice Fusion to connect with doctors that might be interested in pharmaceutical products. Patient Fusion also allows patients to book appointments that are convenient. If your regular doctor cannot see you at, say, noontime, you will be able to see other local providers who can — as long as they are part of the Practice Fusion network. Reviews are provided if available.
Medical Records In The Cloud: Privacy Issues?
So I'm sure the first thing you thought upon reading the bit about advertising within medical records was something like, “Oh, hold up! What about my confidentiality and HIPAA?!” Not to worry. The company assures the public that advertisers are never given patient names or other identifying information. The goal is to improve how certain products are offered to doctors.
Medical Records In The Cloud: Reviews Are Key
27,000 of Practice Fusion's doctors have signed up for Patient Fusion. That may not be close to half of the doctors in the states, but it's a good start. Howard says the service still has over 1.5 million reviews, as well as 3 million appointment offerings in April alone.
Medical Records In The Cloud: Accurate Reviews?
But are the reviews offering a true picture of the providers? If you look on the medical cloud hosting company's website, doctors there have a 98 percent “recommended” rating. This indicates we might be over-hyping the quality of care we receive from our doctors. Another place to find doctor reviews, Yelp, shows the same trend. Doctors are rated highly, and those that don't receive five stars usually have one. A restaurant might get an average 2 or 3 star rating, but it seems that those in charge of caring for us are either really, really good, or horrible.
Medical Records In The Cloud: The Future
Howard sees a more comprehensive review system in the future – a system where doctors have the best patient outcomes. More products will probably be added as additional data is collected. What does the future look like? Real-time details, doctor market share information, what doctors are prescribing and when, and how products are performing. In short, this company might revolutionise health care as we know it.
