title: Patients treated across multiple sites of care: a case for personally controlled health records.
abstract: Patients frequently present to multiple hospitals for acute care visits, resulting in incomplete medical records at any given site, and placing patients at risk for poor quality of care. Our objective was to determine the number of patients presenting for their acute care needs across multiple hospitals in Massachusetts over a three year period. There were 665,481 adult patients who presented to a median of 2 different hospitals (range 2-55) in the course of the study period. Integration of medical information across sites, such as through personally controlled health records, could improve the availability of medical information across sites of care.
authors.affiliation: Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Fabienne
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bourgeois
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Olson
authors.forename: Kenneth D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Mandl
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration; D005260:Female; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008404:Massachusetts; D008498:Medical Record Linkage; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D008875:Middle Aged; D033283:Patient Access to Records; D012189:Retrospective Studies