No vault

September 9, 2015 -- Here's the main part of the letter Microsoft HealthVault provided for me to send to my health care provider (Kaiser): 

	Please send my medical information from your medical
	records system directly to my personal HealthVault
	record using my Direct address.

	I'm taking an active role in my health and wellness
	by keeping a personal health record in HealthVault.

	If you are using an electronic health record (EHR)
	system that is certified for Meaningful Use Stage 2,
	then your software may be able to generate a CCDA
	and send it to me using the Direct protocol.

	(As you may know, Direct is a security-enhanced
	health messaging protocol designed to help protect
	health information when it is sent from one
	computer system to another.) Your EHR software
	vendor should be able to provide instructions.

	    [Kaiser uses Epic...  Amazingly, it's not
	    retrofitted for MU2! See below.]

	Please read How healthcare providers
	can benefit from HealthVault (fascinating!)
	for more information about HealthVault and
	how it supports Meaningful Use Stage 2 (MU2).

I sent that letter to my Kaiser doctor.

Here's what my doctor wrote back:

	Daniel S Keller
	From: [Nameless MD]
	Received: 8/27/2015  4:26 PM PDT

	Hi Dan - Sorry I am unable to do that directly.
	All our Epic secure messages must go through our system.
	You will always need to log into KP.org to retrieve them,
	though you will get a notice to your regular email saying
	you have a message. I have nothing to do with the system
	or contacting the vendor. You can get your medical record
	on a thumb drive. You can go to member services for that.
	The phone number for Member Services is 1-800-464-4000.
	They may be able to help with your questions about
	HealthVault, too.

	Hope that helps.
	Best,
	[Nameless MD]

Turns out you can only get a CD, and it contains only PDFs of your medical record. In other words, Epic (with Kaiser's collusion?) is making sure you cannot do what HealthVault and I are trying to do.

Discussions with Kaiser's medical records department member support people were pointless. They had never heard of CCD nor even MU.

So Epic sucks again. I hope their customers (ahem, Kaiser?) find a vendor who actually delivers on MU2. Go HealthVault!

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