Patent ID: 8180654
Filing Date: 2012-05-15
Classification: G16H,H04L

Abstract:
1. A method, for care providers in the course of treating patients, of utilizing indexed copies of medical records from multiple care providers stored on portable memory devices owned and controlled by the patients, and for indexing, assembling, and updating the patients' medical records and patient information on their portable memory devices, each portable memory device aggregating and storing actual copies of a patient's medical records irrespective of how they are formatted or stored on care providers' paper or disparate electronic systems, said medical records on the portable memory devices being sortable, searchable, readable, and cross-platform compatible, for each encounter with a patient, the method comprises the steps of: (a) accessing the medical records on the patient's portable memory device, wherein access to the medical records stored on the portable memory device is controlled to at least three levels, including a first level of unrestricted access to limited information for emergency providers, a second level of password-protected access to a given set of medical records, said given set of medical records including medical information on said patient that is different from said limited information, and a further third level of password-protected access to a set of patient-designated sensitive medical records, said set of patient-designated sensitive medical records including medical information on said patient that is different from said limited information and from said given set of medical records; (b) generating a pre-populated health summary report derived from the medical records of multiple encounters or patient history stored on the patient's portable memory device; (c) generating a pre-populated referral document derived from the medical records stored on the patient's portable memory device and storing the referral document on the portable memory device to be provided to a specialist care provider along with medical records of the patient stored on the portable memory device, wherein said referral document authorizes the specialist care provider to treat the patient; (d) generating an encounter summary report form partially pre-populated with data derived from the medical records stored on the patient's portable memory device, and recording data on the encounter summary report form relating to the patient's health developed during the encounter, wherein the pre-populated data includes the date, patient's name, and complaints or reasons for the visit, and wherein the data recorded on the encounter summary report form includes the care provider's assessment of the patient's condition, the billing codes applicable to the visit, and the anatomical locations and body systems that were the subject of the visit; (e) sorting or searching through copies of the medical records stored on the portable memory device using indexing fields to find and retrieve specific scanned images of underlying medical documents stored on the portable memory device, said medical records being sortable based on a plurality of criteria; and (f) updating the patient's medical records on the portable memory device during or following the encounter by scanning and indexing paper records and indexing electronic records, and uploading the indexed records irrespective of their original formats to the patient's portable device and the care provider's patient record manager as electronically-manageable records.