A Tale of Two Cities
Meredith is a 67-year old woman who lives in New York in the summer and Florida in the summer. Because she spends about equal time in both locales, she has a primary care physician in both places. It just so happens that both doctors use the same office EMR product. Meredith goes to the same EMR portal site to access the patient portals of both her doctors but there is no way for her Florida doc to see the records of her New York doc and vice versa. Also, Meredith is frustrated that she cannot electronically transfer her records from her New York physician in October when she heads to Florida. She ends up printing out the most important documents on paper and carries them into the office during her visit with her Florida doctor.
 
Meredith decides to get her own health record account with the Direct address [email protected]. She tells her New York physician’s office to send a copy of her chart to her health record account. Within that account, she enables her Florida doctor to have access to her complete health record. She repeats the process when she gets ready to return to New York from Florida. Now both doctors have access to up-to-date information from now on and Meredith no longer needs to worry about it.

Putting It All Together
Elira is a database administrator for a multi-state fracking company and has two sons, ages 3 and 1. Her 3-year old has atopic dermatitis and asthma. Over the last five years she has had to move twice, from Cheyenne to Lubbock to Minot ND. Her sons have gotten screening tests and immunizations at multiple physician offices, public health clinics, and several emergency department visits in three states. Fortunately for her sons, Elira was on the ball and established health record accounts for both children. When she moved to Minot and arranged day care for her sons, their immunization records were immediately available. Her primary care physician was able to come up to speed quickly on the status and prior treatment of her son’s atopic dermatitis and asthma. 

A Rush to Prepare
​Miguel is a 52-year old landscaping contractor in Roswell, New Mexico who went to his dermatologist for a mole check. Biopsy in Las Cruces revealed melanoma. An MRI in Albuquerque revealed lung metastasis. He was referred to MDAnderson Cancer Center for further evaluation and treatment. Miguel was asked to bring his medical records with him for his appointment next week. He called his four physicians, three facilities, and one pathology lab to assemble his records and was told that his records would be mailed to him on DVD within 10 days. He was frantic that he would not receive them in time.
 
Instead, Miguel created his own health record account at [email protected]. He found all the physicians, facilities, and pathology lab in the list of Direct-enabled providers in the Referral section of his health record account. His account then went out and queried each of those providers using Commonwell and Carequality query and retrieve functions and his dermatology photos, biopsy report, pathology report, and MRI images were all automatically downloaded to his health record account within 24 hours. Miguel is now ready to begin his evaluation and treatment in Houston.