Do electronic health records standards help implementing patient bill of rights in hospitals?

Patient bill of rights (PBR) calls for equal rights to access health services for all patients. It makes a foundation for preserving good relationships between patients, doctors and other healthcare staffs. Third Edition of national PBR was published in Iran in 2009. On the other hand, developing national wide Electronic Health Records (EHR) is now one of the strategic goals of Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education. EHR as a basic repository for all related information provides access to the necessary data to organize, store and manage them. It also makes an additional support to the legal aspects of healthcare services, increases staff information about patient rights, and raises them to respect these rights. This article reviews how EHR standards can help to institutionalize the PBR.

To do that, we have collected some important topics of PBR in Iran. Then we used some valid references on Electronic health record standards like ASTM, ISO, HL7 and CEN to review existing standards. The Main issues regarding patient rights derived from these standards were: privacy, confidentiality, and secrecy, access levels to patient information, medical care in emergency situations, patient autonomy and authentication (electronic signature). In each topic, the most relevant standard phrases are marked.

Developing EHR creates an opportunity to establish patient rights in its structure. To internalize them, there are some reliable EHR standards like ASTM and ISO 13606-1 that implementing them could be very fruitful.