One solution may be to encourage more patients to read their medical records. Doctors may be motivated to write more thoughtful and accurate notes if they know their patients will be reading them. While patients have had the right to access their medical records since 1996, when the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was enacted, and the right to electronic copies since 2009, most patients never see their charts.

Source: Let Patients Read Their Medical Records – The New York Times

Go read your medical records. It won’t be enthralling but it may save your lives. Most people who read their records find things that are incorrectly stated. These errors could affect your insurance premium (at the bottom end of the risk spectrum) and kill you (at the top end of risk spectrum).

This piece is a good reminder to read your medical records but carries a very scary message. Busy doctors are copying and pasting your details from one computer system to another and making grave errors. Scary stuff.