Personal Health Record

A personal health record (PHR) is a health record initiated and maintained by an individual in contrast to an electronic medical record which is a patient health record generated and maintained by a doctor or other healthcare professional. Although a personal healthcare record can be in the form of a handwritten health diary, the most practical way to create and maintain a PHR today by using a personal medical records software application which is computer-based. It allows you to organize and retrieve legible data more efficiently than a written health diary and has far greater functionally than a USB personal health record on a flash drive. A record local computer also provides greater security, privacy, accessibility and an Internet-based program.

There are many reasons to have a personal health record, but some of the most compelling ones are as follows:

· 120,000 Americans die each year as a result of preventable medical errors in hospitals.

· If the Center for disease control's annual list of leading cause of death included medical errors, it would rank as number six, ahead of diabetes, and pneumonia. <??>

· 18% of medical errors are due to inadequate availability of patient information.

· Almost no emergency room can always adequately retrieve your critical health information in a time of emergency.

· Medical records are constantly being lost: the doctor retires; your hospital or HMO may purge old records to save storage space; paper records are frequently lost or unavailable.

· Employers frequently change group health insurance plans resulting in patients having to change doctors and request the transfer of medical records which are oftentimes illegible for the new doctor.

· Only 5% of doctors keep medical records on a computer.

A properly compiled and maintained personal health record also better prepares you for non-emergency doctor visits, and avoids the need for recent lab tests or x-rays being reordered because the results are not available to doctor that you might be seeing for the first time. This avoidance of duplicate testing can be a considerable cost savings for you.

Your own personal health record also gives you access to important information needed in a variety of situations such as filing for health insurance, filling out the medical section of a job application and applying for a navigation license, whether it be during a DOT physical or a Federal Aviation Administration flight physical.

Implementation of a personal health record need not be difficult or laborious, and does not necessarily need to be accomplished in one sitting. A very convenient time to begin the creation of personalized record is during the preparation phase of filing for health insurance, but it can be created at any time and over a time frame most convenient for you.

Based on research of various personal health record products and hands-on familiarity, the following health record software program is felt to be of state of the art quality and the one recommended by the site.

HealthFrame Famility Edition Personal Health Record
HealthFrame Family Edition is a medical records software application which stores and organizes health information about you and your family.