Gathering, storing, and retrieving summary electronic healthcare record information from healthcare providers

摘要

The system and method of the invention describes a unique approach to gathering patient treatment information in summary form from a universe of health care providers, each using any form of patient information management; converting that information to pointers that can be searched by a healthcare provider before or during treatment to determine if further information needs to be acquired from the original provider; and a variety of methods to provide access to detailed healthcare treatment and diagnosis information from the original provider through an access and display method provided by the Health Care Provider housing the records if available. The system and method envisages one or more providers of repository services, each offering various ways for healthcare providers to update and maintain summary information, and each providing for continual exchange of information among them to ensure complete access to all available information.

主权项

1. A computer-based system for accessing patient medical information in a network comprising:
at least one repository computing device, said at least one repository computing device configured and arranged to receive and process a plurality of medical record pointers uploaded and generated by at least one healthcare provider computing device, said medical record pointers including summary information sufficient to locate detailed medical records about one or more patients, without including the entire content of said detailed medical records themselves; at least one repository database residing on said at least one repository computing device, said at least one repository database storing a plurality of medical links, each medical link being associated to a medical record that is associated to a patient by a unique patient identifier, each medical link including at least one of: (i) a healthcare provider identification code, (ii) a date of service, and (iii) a diagnostic or billing code, each medical link further including an availability code, said availability code includes a listing of an ability to access the medical record with the respect to the healthcare provider; and an interface processor, which includes a computer hardware component, for generating a medical link in response to a generation command initiated by a healthcare provider having access to said at least one repository database, and wherein the generation of the medical link creates an availability code for the medical record, from one of the following: (a) a hyper-link to the medical record being stored on said at least one repository database, (b) a hyper-link to the medical record being stored on a healthcare provider database, and/or (c) direct contact information to the healthcare provider.