Records For Living, Inc. Releases HealthFrameTM - The Family Health Organizer
HealthFrame improves your family's health and wellness by putting you in control of your family’s health information
Sudbury, MA (PRWEB) April 26, 2005 -- Records For Living, Inc. is introducing
HealthFrameTM 1.0 - a state-of-the-art personal health record (PHR) management
system that compiles health and wellness-related information gathered throughout
an individual's entire life.
HealthFrameTM enables a consumer to
consolidate information from multiple organizations and health care providers,
including hospitals, medical doctors, dentists, chiropractors, nutritionists,
personal trainers, and all others involved in care.
Furthermore,
HealthFrameTM allows the consumer and his or her health care providers to access
that information quickly and easily, ensuring that health care decisions are
based on complete and accurate information at all times.
“Too often,
medical professionals must rely on incomplete information when directing the
care of their patients,” says Simone Pringle, President and Founder of Records
for Living, Inc. “Duplicative, inadequate or even dangerous care can result.
HealthFrameTM users are in control of their own health care information and can
share it with providers as needed. In fact, due to limitations in provider-based
health care information systems, HealthFrameTM is often the only complete,
up-to-date source of information available on an individual
patient.”
Poor Information Exchange Contributes to Medical
Errors
HealthFrameTM was developed to fill a frightening void in the health
care industry. Experts agree that the US medical system is severely
under-performing with regard to the adoption of modern computer technology -
lagging behind virtually all other sectors of the economy. Efforts to
computerize the medical industry have largely focused on the adoption of large,
bureaucratic information systems – systems that cannot share information across
all US providers and whose implementation has been delayed due to high costs or
provider resistance.
The lack of computerized health information has a
real and serious impact on our health. Some facts:
• 120,000 Americans die
each year as a result of preventable medical errors in hospitals. 18% of medical
errors are due to inadequate availability of patient health information.
•
Only 5% of physicians maintain patient medical information on a computer.
•
Medical records are constantly being lost. Physicians retire; hospitals and HMOs
purge older records to save storage space; paper records are often lost or
unavailable when needed.
• Virtually no hospital emergency department can
retrieve a patient's critical health information when it is needed to inform
timely, sometimes life-saving medical decisions.
• On average, American
adults receive only 55% of health care interventions recommended by
evidence-based medical guidelines, including those related to preventive
care.
• Nearly one out of every two U.S. adults has difficulty understanding
basic information necessary to make appropriate health decisions.
•
Healthcare costs are skyrocketing. By 2014, total US health spending is
projected to constitute 18.7 percent of gross domestic product, up from 15.3
percent in 2003.
Medical Safety Can Be Enhanced when Centralized,
Complete Medical Information is Maintained by the Consumer.
A growing
number of health care experts and medical professionals believe the key to huge
advances in patient safety may lie in empowering individuals to take control of
their own medical information.
According to Delivering Consumer-centric
and Information-rich Health Care, a report released by the Department of Health
& Human Services in July of 2004, “Many envision a health care industry that
is consumer-centric and information-rich, in which medical information follows
the consumer, and information tools guide medical decisions. ...This new way
will result in fewer medical errors, fewer unnecessary treatments or wasteful
care, and fewer variations in care, and will ultimately improve care for all
Americans.”
The personal and societal benefits of PHR use have been
recognized by the US Department of Health and Human Services (http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/), as well as public and private
organizations, such as Connecting for Health (http://www.ConnectingForHealth.org), The Markle Foundation (http://www.markle.org/markle_programs/healthcare/), and The
American Health Information Management Association (http://www.myphr.com/).
"Who cares the most about your
health? You do," asserts Pringle. "Therefore, you have the greatest incentive to
ensure the accuracy and completeness of your own health information.
HealthFrameTM helps you optimize your health care by compiling a complete
listing of diagnostic procedures and interventions along with results, tracking
trends in your health, and ensuring that complete information can be made
available to any primary care physician or specialist as you require medical
services."
HealthFrameTM
The HealthFrameTM concept mirrors that of the
popular and user-friendly personal financial planning and management software
tools that have been used successfully by consumers for years. HealthFrameTM
supports all aspects of health and wellness management and allows consumers to
track their health and care, improving the quality of the health care they
receive. HealthFrameTM:
• easily and conveniently summarizes health
information from different sources
• allows the consumer to verify that all
information is accurate and up-to-date
• tracks critical health information
including progress on health indicators (e.g. weight, cholesterol, blood
pressure)
• provides a prompt, up-to-date view of an individual’s entire
health picture
• allows consumers to carry with them critical, life-saving
health information
• automatically creates a customized medical reference
library based on the individual’s conditions, diagnoses, and medications, which
the individual can use to inform health care decisions
• helps reduce health
care costs by identifying duplicative tests and encouraging preventive care
• simplifies the tracking of medical expenses for taxes or
insurance
Availability
HealthFrame may be purchased for $49.95 from http://www.HealthFrame.com
or from authorized distributors.
About Records For Living,
Inc.
Records For Living, Inc. is a pioneer in the personal information
management industry and is focused on providing solutions to a broad range of
health care issues.
Records For Living, Inc. has released HealthFrameTM
as an innovative solution to personal health management. Records For Living,
Inc. also provides professional services to our health care provider partners to
support the improved exchange of medical record information between providers
and patients.
Records For Living, Inc. may be reached on the World Wide
Web at http://www.RecordsForLiving.com/ or via email at e-mail
protected from spam bots.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/4/prweb232927.htm