Parents Locked Out of Health Records after Age 13

From the Wall Street Journal, an interesting article about the deep dark hole for families created by our federal and state legislators.

A growing number of health plans, hospitals and doctor's offices are making the switch to electronic medical-record systems, in response to the Bush administration's push to make online records available to all Americans within the next decade. Such systems, like the one run by Group Health Cooperative of Seattle, which covers the Scott family, offer more than just convenience. They hold the promise of faster sharing of vital medical information, reduction of medical errors and more control for consumers over their care.

But with teens, these efforts risk running afoul of a complex patchwork of federal and state laws that allow adolescents to seek confidential family-planning and mental-health services without their parents' consent.
Such laws make certain aspects of teens' health records off-limits to parents. However, electronic medical-records systems don't yet have a foolproof way to flag confidential material and hide it from parents -- something that can more easily be done with paper records. And as minors, teens can't on their own enter into the security agreements required to grant access to their online records.

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