BRIAN KLEPPER and DAVID C. KIBBE
The dream of reason did not take power into account...Modern medicine is one of those extraordinary works of reason...But medicine is also a world of power.
-Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 1984
Today's unveiling of a Declaration of Health Data Rights is an important action, long overdue, that represents a collaborative effort by a group of health care professionals - activists, entrepreneurs, technologists and clinicians - all colleagues we hold in high esteem.
The Declaration's several points arise from a single, simple premise: that patients own their own data, and that that ownership cannot be pre-empted by a professional or an institution. And there lies its power, especially in the context of early 21st Century health care. It is a transformative ideal that currently is not the norm. But we join our colleagues in declaring that it should be.
It is fair to note that this effort - making sure that all of us have immediate access to personal health information in easy-to-use (i.e., electronic or "computable” format - is NOT the most important thing we need to achieve in health care right now. We all know that the system is wildly out of balance, with costs so excessive that even the insured mainstream of Americans risk financial ruin with a major health event, and quality that varies from superb to atrocious. Restoring a semblance of stability and sustainability to America's health system will require many measures that may not include an individual's right to control his/her own health information.
But it is an appropriate, critically necessary seed, nonetheless. Information withheld from patients, purchasers and professionals, wittingly or unwittingly, is the deepest root of America's health care crisis. Too often it is an act of power, enabling - and we use this word in the clinical sense - actions without accountability, and trumping the checks and balances that laws and markets strive for in progressive societies. There are many other roots to our current dilemma, of course, but nothing is as pernicious or corrosive as the lack of information transparency. It has been the practice in American health care for decades, with ramifications so grave that, by itself, it has placed the nation’s future in peril.
And so the right place to begin is with a straightforward statement that health information belongs first and foremost to patients. We hope that this seed will take root, that doctors around the country will erect a small poster in their waiting rooms saying "We support the Declaration of Health Data Rights."
And we also hope this event will spur a new sensibility about who owns information, about accountability, so that pricing and quality information on doctors, hospitals, health plans, drugs, devices, diagnostic procedures and treatments become freely available to health care patients and purchasers, so that absolute power is trumped and so Americans can have health care that is trustworthy, excellent and affordable, no matter where it is received.
But it is an appropriate, critically necessary seed, nonetheless. Information withheld from patients, purchasers and professionals, wittingly or unwittingly, is the deepest root of America's health care crisis. Too often it is an act of power, enabling - and we use this word in the clinical sense - actions without accountability, and trumping the checks and balances that laws and markets strive for in progressive societies. There are many other roots to our current dilemma, of course, but nothing is as pernicious or corrosive as the lack of information transparency. It has been the practice in American health care for decades, with ramifications so grave that, by itself, it has placed the nation’s future in peril.
And so the right place to begin is with a straightforward statement that health information belongs first and foremost to patients. We hope that this seed will take root, that doctors around the country will erect a small poster in their waiting rooms saying "We support the Declaration of Health Data Rights."
And we also hope this event will spur a new sensibility about who owns information, about accountability, so that pricing and quality information on doctors, hospitals, health plans, drugs, devices, diagnostic procedures and treatments become freely available to health care patients and purchasers, so that absolute power is trumped and so Americans can have health care that is trustworthy, excellent and affordable, no matter where it is received.
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