It's your data

"God heals and the doctor takes the fee" - Benjamin Franklin

CNN has a must-read story "Patients demand: 'Give us our damned data'". It describes how individuals suffer while hospitals dither or refuse to transfer patient data to another hospital.

CNN recommends these tips.

1. Know your rights
   The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, gives hospitals and doctors 30 days to respond to a request for medical records, although some state laws provide for a shorter time frame. In urgent situations, such as a transfer to another hospital, it's customary for hospitals to move more quickly.
2. Be prepared to make your request in writing.
3. Confirm that the hospital receives your request.
4. If you have a choice, select a medical provider who uses electronic medical records. These can be emailed to you or accessed via a secure web site.
5. Get the new hospital or doctor to help you by having them make the request.
6. Remember the limits of the law
   Your doctor doesn't have to give you access to to information he or she thinks might cause you or someone else substantial harm. Some states allow even more information to be kept from a patient. For example, the New York Department of Health Web site says doctors may deny you access to "personal notes and observations" they've made in your record.
7. Get angry - be firm, don't accept no.
   You may need to bring in an attorney.
8. File a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Bottom Line

It's your data. You paid for it.

How to Do Anything

“Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part”

An amazing resource to know about is the web site, How to Make Anything.com. The site contains "GigaBytes of data collected from all over the world" with detailed instructions on how to do just about anything. Items include:

UNDERSTANDING CEREAL CROPS I-WHEAT, OATS, BARLEY, AND RYE
How to Dehorn Cattle
Raising Yaks (a Yak is pictured above)
Cheese making
Donkey work made easy
Snail farming
Making Yoghurt
and more like all types of stoves, making bricks, making Ox carts, sanitation, medicine, education, etc.

Bottom Line
Sites like How to Make Anything.com are amazing and fun to read. But they are not much use after a disaster that knocks out electricity. Or if the site is popular and well know, the server may become overloaded by too much traffic under emergency conditions. You need to prepare in advance to make this site useful:
1. Print out topics of interest and create your own survival manual this way
2. Buy some good survival books
3. You could download useful topics to your PC or flash drive and when the internet and power is down use an UPS (backup power supply) to access the topics (warning - the UPS won't last long).
4. For those technically inclined, it's possible for a bicycle to create power to run a laptop (but not enough for a PC) http://science.howstuffworks.com/question658.htm
Here's one product that claims it can charge batteries via bike: http://www.econvergence.net/electro.htm

Sharing with your Spouse

I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with
twenty-eight years ago. - Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

Clearing out old papers this morning I came across a list of information that spouses (or significant others) should share. These include company names & address, phone numbers, email, account ID & password for the following...

• Utility companies: gas, water, electric, telephone, cable TV, cell phone
• Contractors: plumbing, air-conditioning, auto repair, lawn mowing, etc
• Professionals like lawyers, financial advisers, and doctors.
• What is your preferred hospital and health insurance?
• Life insurance, Home/Fire insurance, car insurance.
• Caregivers (like babysitters) for your children or elderly parents
• Medications and dosage taken by family members
• School & teachers for your children
• Relatives and friends to contact in an emergency
• Tax preparer or location of past tax information
• Outstanding loans
• Retirement plans
• Credit cards, bank account, CDs

Bottom Line

If there are assets you don't own jointly, arrange for your spouse to have "Power of Attorney" in case you die or are incapacitated. See also my earlier blog, Death - JT TEN WROS regarding Joint Tenant with Right of Surviorship. Other blogs on this topic include what important papers to collect and how to keep them safe, Protecting your Go-Kit Contents, and Who gets your 401(k) when you're dead?

In our house we entered this information into an excel spreadsheet, attached a password to it for privacy and printed out a copy stored in an non-obvious location. We also put a copy of this information on my parents computer and backed it up on flash drives we carry with us.