How Can HealthInfoNet Help Me as a Patient?
HealthInfoNet can help coordinate care, reduce mistakes, and prevent the spread of disease.
Here’s what Dan Mingle, M.D., a family doctor from South Paris,
has to say about HealthInfoNet benefits:
“Taking good care of patients depends on having good information. Using computers in my office is the first step, since I can quickly see a patient’s medical problems, medicines, and tests that are due. But, I also need to be able to give and get information from specialists, labs, and pharmacies. HealthInfoNet will allow this. And, if my patient goes to the hospital, doctors there can see how I’ve been taking care of her. This will speed good decisions and help reduce mistakes.
HealthInfoNet will also help your medical care team exchange data more quickly with public health experts at Maine CDC. Quicker reporting of certain diseases and conditions can help prevent the spread of disease and could help in a disaster. This will benefit all of us.”
HealthInfoNet is a system to create an electronic health record in one place and share it with your medical care team, unless you say no. HealthInfoNet is a statewide system that links information from many Maine healthcare sites in one secure computer location. So, if you get prescriptions or lab tests or medical care at different places in Maine, each place can have correct and up to date information about you. Paper records have always been shared. Computers do the job better and faster.
HealthInfoNet allows computers in different Maine health systems to “talk” to each other. Many Maine doctors, pharmacies, labs, and hospitals are using computers to create health records. As time goes on, many more will do so. This helps each caregiver give better, safer care. For example, if you use just one pharmacy, the pharmacy computer system will check any new prescription with medicines you already take. This helps ensure that the medicines are safe to be taken together. But, if you get a prescription in the hospital or away from home, your local pharmacy can’t connect with these other places. Serious mistakes can result. HealthInfoNet will help connect different information systems across Maine.