Patient portals giving individuals direct access to their electronic health records could potentially be a part of the meaningful use rules from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, according to recent recommendations from an advisory panel organized by the office.
The group said that giving patients direct access to their records would encourage patient involvement, one of the major goals of electronic health records, according to Government Health IT. However, rules governing the formatting of this information will play an important part in any initiative that comes forward.
"When patients start getting access to their information, like problem lists and medications, it's like when you have to clean up for company. The data has to look right. When patients start looking at it, there's pressure to make that happen," Paul Egerman, of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the group that made the recommendations, told the news source.
Such a process could also lead to a universal language for electronic health records, the group said. This would encourage broader health information exchanges, a key component of the technology.
The Office of the National Coordinator is currently developing the second stage of meaningful use rules, which are expected to go into effect in 2013.