The condition of our medical care

My background is in Healthcare. I started as a net admin for a hospital and went on to be s security admin for a hospital. I am always thinking about the care and security of our health systems. I recently encountered a major flaw in our health care system. One that struck me personally because it not only impacted my care but also because I could see the security parallel. In security we are concerned about access to the data. Data loss prevention has become a big topic and when I talk to people that are focussing on this topic they not only are worried about data leaving the network but also about losing access to data or losing data all together. In my recent experience with my healthcare providers, my insurance company forced my to a specialist 2 hours north of where I lived; I live in a rural state. normally this would not be a big deal, but I work in the opposite direction by an hour and a half. not only is this a day off from work, but it limits my access to my healthcare provider and to my healthcare information. It limits the access of healthcare information held by this specialist by my other providers and generally makes this a loss of care and services. While it did provide me access to a higher level of expertise for that particular service, by preventing me from going to the specialist closer to my home I lost the quality of care provided by the continuity of care and information flow. When it comes to our data we always need to authenticate who has control over the information. Why do we not do this with our health care systems. We are too willing to let the Insurance providers dictate who has that control. HIPAA states that it is our information that we own and control. and yet we still seem to let this information be managed by other people. I challenge the healthcare industry to give control back to the patients. I challenge the insurance industry to redesign their models for business. I know it will never happen but I still throw out the challenge.