Although some physicists believe that time travel is possible, I don’t imagine I’ll ever get to experience it. But recently I came close.

It happened when I called my physician’s office to confirm the date of my annual physical exam. The office manager told me I had missed my appointment by two months. I replied that I never received a reminder from the office, but he said they had called me. When I asked him what number they called, he came up with one that was over 20 years old and was associated with a two decade-old address.

This unwelcome blast from the past was troubling. But what especially concerned me is that I had never given my doctor this data, since I only became her patient after I moved from my old address. So how did it become part of my current electronic health record?

The office manager theorized that it might have occurred when their group practice merged with a regional hospital network. He asked if I had ever been a patient in one of the group’s hospitals.

Not knowing which hospitals this corporation owns, I couldn’t answer his question. Even if I had remembered, the hospital may have changed its name following a merger. My guess is that the data was captured in 1988 when I had a minor outpatient procedure at a hospital near where I lived at the time. Then it travelled through time into my present-day EHR when patient databases from the group practice and the hospital network were merged.

Naturally, I wondered what other out-of-date information might be in my electronic health record, and what implications it might have for my health care now. Could my doctor make a wrong diagnosis because she’s looking at old lab test results, scans or out-of-date prescriptions?

The lesson learned is that patients today need to have access to their medical data and take an active role in managing it. It’s too important to be left to IT department managers… or to chance.

Andrew Karp
Group Editor, Lenses and Technology
[email protected]