Heart clinic offers patient records to go

A Tennessee practice lets patients buy a copy of their medical records on CD-ROM.

By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. Aug. 4, 2003.

A cardiology group in Memphis, Tenn., has begun selling CD-ROMs to its patients so they easily can share their medical records with any emergency clinician.

Seven-doctor Memphis Heart Clinic is offering the records on disk because it believes quick clinician access to patient information can potentially save lives, said Joseph K. Samaha, MD, cardiologist and the group's president.

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The disk includes information about allergies, medications, stress results, ECGs, laboratory results, hospital discharge summaries and the specific type of any pacemaker or stent. "That information is invaluable [to treating clinicians] when patients are traveling and have problems," Dr. Samaha said.

The information on the CD-ROMs also may help eliminate redundant testing or unnecessary hospital admissions, he said.

For example, if a patient has an ECG done at the emergency department, treating clinicians can compare the results with the baseline ECG stored on the CD-ROM. "If it is abnormal but unchanged from the previous ECG, it may save [patients] having a stress test or an overnight admission just for that abnormality."

The group is charging $40 for the service, available at patient request.

The $40 charge covers costs of disk, labor and software.

Half of the fee represents the cost of the disk itself. The remainder covers the software and the labor involved in burning the CD, said Carol Carnell, the group's administrator.

The CD-ROMs are not commercial disks, but are part of Memphis Heart's electronic medical records system. Each one is about the size and shape of a credit card and cannot be altered. They can, however, be read by any computer with a CD-ROM drive.

"We're not trying to make money on this at all," Carnell said. "It's not a money-maker and we do not intend it to be."

It takes about 20 minutes to burn a CD, which the group mails to patients.

Although it's too early to know, Dr. Samaha doesn't expect the service will make life easier for staff or physicians. The practice previously printed information for patients off its EMR. That option, is still available, free.