By Gertie Mourar

I recently received a medical questionnaire in the mail to complete and return before my scheduled colonoscopy…where do I find all the answers?

By creating a personal health record now, this can make completing further questionnaires easy. A personal health record should include anything that helps you and your health care providers manage your health. Start with the basics:

• Your primary care doctor’s name and phone number
• Allergies, including drug and food allergies
• Your medications, including dosages
• Chronic health problems, such as high blood pressure
• Major surgeries, with dates
• Living will or advance directives
• Family history
• Immunization history

A personal health record not only allows you to share information with your care providers but also empowers you to manage your health between visits. For example, a personal health record enables you to:

• Track and assess your health. Record and track your progress toward your health goals, such as lowering your cholesterol level.
• Make the most of doctor visits. Be ready with questions for your doctor and information you want to share, such as blood pressure readings since your last visit.
• Manage your health between visits. Upload and analyze data from home-monitoring devices such as a blood pressure cuff. And remind yourself of your doctor’s instructions from your last appointment.
• Get organized. Track appointments, vaccinations, and preventive or screening services, such as mammograms. In fact, a recent study found that when parents used personal health records for their children, the children were more likely to get their preventive well-child checkups on time.

How do I get started?

Click here to see a sample format for documenting your personal health record.

Maintaining this information does take time and effort, but the benefits will outweigh the obligation when you have the data at your fingertips and cannot easily remember the last doctor visit or what year was ‘that’ surgery! Ensure that you maintain accurate, updated information by revising your personal health record after each doctor visit, incident or hospitalization.

If you are computer savvy, don’t hesitate to copy this information onto a thumb drive for ease of access for not only you, but your family, when needed.

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Top photo credit: 73-20140920-9609 via photopin (license)