Giving the Patient His Medical Record: A Proposal to Improve the System

Abstract

Dissatisfaction with the functioning of the medical-care system has become widespread. Four serious problems are maintaining high quality of care, establishing mutually satisfactory physicianpatient relations, ensuring continuity and avoiding excessive bureaucracy. We believe these problems could be alleviated, in part, if patients were given copies of all their medical records. The record to a large extent embodies the informational product of medical consultation and treatment. In most exchanges in society a purchased product becomes the property of the purchaser, who is then free to evaluate the product on his own, have it evaluated by experts and choose freely among suppliers . . .