My Health Record

I've been listening to Tony Bartone, president of the AMA, defending it at the National Press Club. Not very convincing, I'm afraid. He went down the rabbit hole for me when it became all about how inconvenient it was for doctors to go to nursing homes (which are getting further and further out in suburbia) and not be able to access records or use their system and then having to go back to their offices and write up notes and fax scripts and waste their valuable time, etc etc....you get the picture.

He has a point but it did nothing to sell the idea to me as the focus was on the wrong end of the equation--patients concerns come last, it seems. Again. The journos gave him a grilling about why he felt it was his position to defend the system, particularly in light of current concerns about security. Those who say that all the information is available to those who know how to find it are also missing the point. The thing that worries me is third parties being given pretty much unlimited licence--the suppliers of the aps for internet access, for example--to mine the data and how poorly that seems to have been thought out.

I've been a walking health record for years, the bloody folder comes to all my appointments. It would be very convenient to be able to leave it at home and to trust that if I get hit by the proverbial bus, someone will be able to sort it all out. I'm holding off for the moment and have set a diary date with myself closer to the cut off time to make a decision. I'll probably not opt out, but it is frustrating to see the amount of sensationalism surrounding the whole debate. What is the fake news? Some if obviously is.