One of the best lines in the movie First Monday in October is when the liberal-leaning justice (played so believably by Walter Matthau) makes fun of the new female justice’s super-clean desk by saying “Do aircraft land here frequently?” No self-respecting 1980’s attorney or judge had anything less than several former trees lying all over their desks to demonstrate how much legalese they were constantly poring over, so this was a significant jab. It is a bit ironic, then, that this week — the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court begins another year of paper-pushing — marks the paperless future of our health care system. Hat tip to STAT News for calling it “Data Liberation Day” — October 6, 2022 marked the day that health care providers and their electronic record system vendors must provide patients with full, free, and electronic access to their health records. No more paper, no more hassle or delays getting your own health information. At least, that’s what is intended by the latest set of rules implemented by the HHS Office of National Coordinator of Health IT and authorized by the 21st Century Cures Act. We will see if hospitals do a better job with this than they did with releasing their prices mandated by transparency rules. There are a lot of zingers in First Monday in October, which is about individual / corporate rights v. societal rights — and this is a zinger that we’ve adapted for our purposes: “One man’s pornography [burden of making health data available] is another man’s poetry [necessary access to one’s own health care information].”
October 7, 2022 | 3 min read
October 7, 2022
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