Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/759111
32 CIO / HEALTH IT This Reporter Tried to Gather All His Medical Records in 72 Hours: Here's What Happened By Erin Dietsche A er Donald Trump challenged Hillary Clinton to release her full medical records, New York Times reporter Margot Sanger-Katz wrote an article calling the idea of complete medical records "fiction." But is it really impossible to hunt down all your medical records? NYT reporter Ron Lieber wanted to find out. e verdict? "I did not finish," Mr. Lieber wrote in his follow-up arti- cle for the NYT. But in the span of three days, he managed to do quite a bit of sleuthing. e following are the steps Mr. Lieber took to gather what he could of his medical records. 1. Pediatrician. First, Mr. Lieber got in touch with his childhood physician, Frederick M. Cahan, MD — whom he called "Uncle Fred" — in Chicago. Although Dr. Cahan managed to find the records of Mr. Lieber's twin siblings, who were born in 1976, he couldn't locate Mr. Lieber's. 2. Insurance. In 2006, elevated liver enzymes showed up on Mr. Li- eber's life insurance medical screening. He visited a specialist to have an ultrasound, which didn't show anything abnormal. But he couldn't remember who the specialist was, and his primary care physician didn't have a record of a referral. inking his insurer in 2006 was Aetna, Mr. Lieber gave the company a call. To get a copy of every single one of its explanation benefits, Mr. Lieber would have to sign a release form. He decided to sign the form and fax it to Aetna, but was forced to contend with multiple faulty fax machines. 3. Databases. In 2009, Mr. Lieber took a prescription drug but couldn't recall the name of it or the physician who had prescribed it. He called up companies such as ScriptCheck and IntelliScript, which provide reports on people's prescription records. Mr. Lieber learned "ScriptCheck will give you only the prescription data that it gave the insurance company, going back seven years." Since his pursuit was of 2009 information based on his life insurance applica- tion from 2006, the attempt was futile. His encounter with IntelliScript was similar. Aer putting in a request, he received an email saying the company didn't have any information on him. It turns out "no report exists until an insurance company asks for one." 4. Mental health. Mr. Lieber didn't glean anything from his ther- apist, either. "Alas, the federal law that grants you the right to request your medical records specifically gives mental health practitioners per- mission to withhold their psychotherapy notes," he wrote. 5. Other physicians. Although he wanted to gather records from all the physicians he'd seen throughout the years, some attempts to do so fell through. He was easily able to get the results of his last liver test from his current primary care physician, who was an early EHR adopter. But he had to fax in a request for records from a physician he'd previously seen for back trouble. And he couldn't just scan the X-ray image from when he broke his arm this year — instead, he had to wait for a full copy of the X-ray. 6. Travel vaccinations. To his surprise, Mr. Lieber's attempt at getting records from a round of travel vaccinations in 2005 proved successful. He couldn't remember where he'd gotten the shots, but he thought the location might be in Greenwich Village. Aer visiting a number of viable options, Mr. Lieber found a travel medicine special- ist's office that looked familiar. He stopped in, and one of the office's staff members unsuccessfully searched for his name in the database. Aer Mr. Lieber told her the probable date of his visits, she pulled out a flash drive and found his records. n Survey: Average Health IT Professional Salary Is More Than $93k, But Nearly 50% Feel They Deserve More By Anuja Vaidya O n average, health IT professionals earn $93,469 per year, with an average bonus of $7,603, ac- cording to the 2016 Health IT Salary Report by HealthITJobs.com, a free job search resource for health IT professionals. The report includes responses from 802 professionals currently or recently working in health IT. Executives ac- counted for 2.5 percent of all respondents. Here are seven key findings: 1. Around 51 percent of respondents said they are satis- fied or very satisfied with their salary. 2. However, the other half felt they should be making more. The average gap between what they make and what they thought they should make was $15,553. 3. Average health IT executive salaries totaled $171,341 with an average bonus of $27,500. 4. Nearly 30 percent of respondents said they worked for consulting firms, which pay employees 14 percent more than software companies. 5. The most common type of employer was hospital and healthcare organizations, who paid health IT profession- als $86,321 on average. 6. Male health IT professionals earned 14 percent more than women in health IT. 7. Despite the fact that 79 percent of respondents re- ported being very satisfied or satisfied with their cur- rent job, 40 percent said they will likely change jobs in the next year. n