So let’s say I’ve decided I really, truly do need to take control of my health care and as a first step I’m going to start my own personal health record. I really DO want to become a partner with my health care provider in taking care of myself. No more letting my doc look over a chart – one I can’t see while she’s reading it; for all I know she’s looking at photos of Brad Pitt, that’s why she smiling – while I sit patiently in my paper gown on the examining table waiting for her all-knowing pronouncement. Nope, next time I will look with her at my health record on a small computer screen perched on the little table or counter that’s always by the sink across from the examining table. I’ll see the notes I made two days before regarding my attempt to get my overall cholesterol down and I’ll see the notes the nurse just put there after she took my blood pressure, heart rate and weight before she ushered me into the examining room. I’ll be able to see that because I’ll have a PHR, one tied to my written medical record. But I didn’t necessarily start that PHR. Nope. When I wrote this post’s first paragraph “So let’s say I’ve decided …” I didn’t mean I was going to start a PHR from scratch. I meant I was going to access one my doctor started for me – it’s my medical record online, with a section I can access and to which I can add information. If, as several PHR pundits have noted, the main “problem” with getting consumers hip to the idea of starting a PHR is the very fact that we in the U.S. abhor doing anything that smacks of tedium (Known allergies? Penicillin. Have you ever been diagnosed with… Ooo, look, I need to do the dishes!), why not have my doc or someone else do it? That is, my health record already exists – I had to fill out a few forms at my doc’s office when I first visited and she and her staff have been adding to it each time I stop by – why not meld that record into one I can access and add to, as well? Surely this is doable? Perhaps not now, but soon? Online medical records are a big thing for people whose job it is to manage these things. Already some physicians have their patients’ records online (I had a doc once walk into the examining room carrying a laptop instead of a clipboard). Can we take it a step further and allow consumers access to that record? Of course, I can already hear the treble cries rise from those who worry about security issues, as well they should. But surely we can create a secure online medical record that’s accessible to both health care professionals and the very patient whose medical history is written in that record? I’m sure others have already thought of this idea; I’m certainly no genius. But it seems to me if a huge challenge in getting people to start a PHR is just that — getting people to start a PHR – why not have one already started for them?