Patent ID: 8452617

Claim:
A computer-based system for accessing patient medical information in a network comprising: a plurality of repository databases residing on repository computing devices, each of said plurality of repository databases storing medical links, each medical link being associated to a medical record that is associated to a patient by a unique patient identifier, the medical link including a healthcare provider identification code, a date of service, a diagnostic or billing code, and an availability code, said availability code includes a listing of an ability to access the medical record with the respect to the healthcare provider; a healthcare provider computing device storing detailed medical records about a plurality of patients, said healthcare provider computing device configured and arranged to generate and upload a set of medical record pointers to one of said repository computing devices, 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; 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 one of the repository databases, 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 one of the repository databases, (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.