The idea for Medical Records On Call, also known as MROC, sprouted, like many small businesses before it, out of a simple problem that could have been prevented but for which there was no immediate solution.
And so Robert Flamm, a longtime Westchester resident currently living in Stamford, Conn., made it his business to create one.
During the course of being treated for a medical issue that required him to see multiple doctors belonging to different practices, Flamm had a reaction to one drug as a result of an interaction with another drug he had been taking at the time.
The reaction could have been prevented, Flamm said, if all of his doctors had been fully aware of each of the treatments he was being prescribed.
In subsequent research, however, Flamm said he could not find a single service available to consumers that would allow multiple physicians spread across different practices to view an individual”™s medical records and history regardless of the internal hardware or software systems being used by their respective practices.
“The drug interaction problem that I had, had I let it go and just assumed it might be a symptom, could have really been a permanently disabling problem,” Flamm said. “So that”™s why what we wanted to do at the same time as creating a system that worked was creating one that the patients were involved with, that they would be able to organize.”
Flamm and business partner Kevin Kessler began developing MROC earlier this year as a cloud-based service for individuals to upload and store their medical records electronically, with physicians able to view those records, but not change or update them, on any device or platform provided they have the proper access code.
The benefit is twofold, Flamm says: First, it ensures that doctors are aware of all of the medical records their patients want them to be aware of; and second, it enables patients to have a better understanding of their own medical records.
“Regardless of the system that a particular doctor”™s office uses, they (the electronic files) are all uploadable,” Flamm said. “So if you were to go to doctor A, B and C and they all were on three different systems, we have the only service that would actually allow all three doctors to see all of the records because we”™re not dependent” on a particular piece of hardware or software.
MROC launched three months ago, and is based in Westchester, though Flamm said he cannot disclose the location due to security reasons. The company is being marketed nationwide.
The company initially has marketed its service to businesses for use by their employees and to insurance companies, which could then include a subscription to MROC as part of an individual”™s insurance policy.
Flamm compared MROC with a sort of wellness program, adding that businesses and insurance companies alike have an interest in keeping their employees and clients healthy.
While the service is still relatively new, Flamm projected MROC would have “in the multiple hundreds of thousands of members” by the end of the year.
“We know what we”™re on to,” he said.
The company”™s strategy has been to market MROC to consumers rather than to physicians and health care providers.
He said MROC has kept physicians “at arm”™s length initially,” but said doctors have increasingly been expressing interest in the service when exposed to it through their patients.
“All of a sudden doctors who are skeptical are looking at it and within weeks they”™re turning around and asking other patients about it and suggesting they get it,” Flamm said.
Flamm said not allowing anyone to change, input or update a customer”™s records aside from the customer himself was a key component of MROC”™s development.
Unlike other companies that input clients”™ records on their behalf, “We don”™t transpose, we don”™t translate, we don”™t interpret,” Flamm said. That measure of security, he said, prevents doctors from changing a file after it had already been uploaded by a patient.
MROC customers have the option of only uploading the files they want their doctors to see, but Flamm said the company recommends to its customers that they upload all of their files, adding that the system won”™t allow a customer to upload any single file unless it is completely uploaded.
MROC is currently building its sales staff as it hopes to begin marketing the service to individual consumers beginning in 2013.
Flamm said the company”™s marketing efforts to date have focused exclusively on companies and insurance providers because the newly formed entity did not have the advertising budget to allow it to target individual consumers.
This sounded too good to be true, so I went on line and finally found
Medical Records On Call.com, it’s just $29.95 a year, why haven’t we heard of this service before now?