Life Saver

Charlotte's Claire Blocker, president and founder of the HeartBright Foundation, is featured on the National Institute of Health's website supporting the use of electronic health records -- or EHRs, as the medical community likes to call them.

Blocker, who has survived a stroke, a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery, says:
"I am quite sure that I would not have had the opportunity to have lived this long if the valuable information EHRs provide to my physicians on a daily basis was not so readily available. It has been 13 years since my bypass surgery, and at 65, I feel happier, healthier, and far more balanced than I have ever been."

Blocker takes more than 60 pills a day (22 different medications). When her medicines are changed, the prescribing physician updates that information by sending the electronic medical record to her entire team of doctors, so they're all working from the latest information.

"This is exactly how EHRs saved my life in the ER," Blocker writes on the website. "My medication had given me grand mal seizures and my husband, who is my caregiver, was out of town. If the doctors did not have access to my EHR, they would have not known what caused the seizure and how to treat me."

Here's a link to her story:
http://www.healthit.gov/patients-families/claire-blocker