Google Health Records: Ready for Prime Time?

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The short answer: Not so much. From the Boston Globe (via ProPublica):

When Dave deBronkart, a tech-savvy kidney cancer survivor, tried to transfer his medical records from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to Google Health, a new free service that lets patients keep all their health records in one place and easily share them with new doctors, he was stunned at what he found.

Google said his cancer had spread to either his brain or spine – a frightening diagnosis deBronkart had never gotten from his doctors – and listed an array of other conditions that he never had, as far as he knew, like chronic lung disease and aortic aneurysm. A warning announced his blood pressure medication required “immediate attention.”

“I wondered, ‘What are they talking about?’ ” said deBronkart, who is 59 and lives in Nashua.

The culprit: Bad billing records. Read the rest of the Globe story for deets.

If Google’s wicked smart crew can’t get the backend of a health care e-record repository right, can anyone?

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