AHIMA has contributed to the development of a new tool that helps simplify and streamline patients’ requests for their medical records.
The Health Record Request Wizard prototype tool was released on September 21 at the Biden Cancer Summit in Washington, DC. Development of the tool was led by the advocacy organization X4 Health and was supported in part by the Commonwealth Fund. The tool is designed to help individuals obtain and organize electronic formats of their medical records in a secure location.
“The Wizard is a true consensus-driven reference implementation for something we so desperately need—an easy way for patients to request digital copies of their health data in the form and format of their choice,” said Aneesh Chopra, president of CareJourney and former US Chief Technology Officer, who served as an advisor on the Wizard project. “By designing the Wizard with key stakeholders—patients, medical records professionals, apps, and others—it offers an ‘easy button’ for implementation. As such, I call on all health care providers to adopt and use this framework.”
The tool is the result of a year-long research and development effort to build upon the popular model release of information (ROI) form previously created by AHIMA, which was a key collaborator in the Wizard creation. The Wizard is a digital “smart form” that uses branch logic and skip patterns to help consumers articulate what they need, in what format, and by when. It results in a highly specific, HIPAA-compliant document delivered to the healthcare provider’s medical records specialist, according to a press release. The project involved testing with consumers and health information management professionals.
AHIMA’s Vice President for Policy and Government Relations Pam Lane described the Wizard as an extension of AHIMA’s Patient Request for Health Information Model Form.
“It provides an innovative tool that can be used by health information management professionals to change workflow processing for consumer-generated information requests. The Wizard will help create ever-better consumer engagement experiences by streamlining complexity in the healthcare environment,” Lane said.
Click here to see a live prototype of the tool and here for a full press release about the project.
