I’m working on a longer post about different ways to keep track of medication, but my wife is having problems with one of her doctors, who is refusing to refill a prescription at the moment.

We have a great prescription plan with my medical insurance, so the cost is rarely an issue. I have a certain amount of money taken out of my paycheck each month before taxes, and that gets put into a flexible spending account, which I then get reimbursed from throughout the year. This is the only way we can get a break on taxes as far as our medical expenses are concerned.

The most difficult problem is keeping track of what medications need to be refilled, so that we can order the refill and pick them up before we run out. I know that sounds like a no-brainer, but when you are dealing with over a dozen medications that have to be approved by four different doctors, coupled with the insurance company that will not re-fill a prescription unless you order the re-fill within a certain window of opportunity, then you have a situation that can get ugly very fast.

I was just taking a look at the beta from Google, Google Health, which is an application to track your health information in a central location.

According to the FAQ,

Google Health offers a single location to consolidate and store your medical records and personal health information. Saving medical information in one secure location helps you and your doctors have accurate and up-to-date information about your health when you need it the most. This in turn means that your medical treatments may be safer and more effective. You can also use Google Health to access a host of online services and tools, from a variety of third-party companies, that can help you better manage your care.

I have some mixed feelings about this application. I do think that it would be convenient to have all of our medical records in a single location. Google won me over a couple of years ago, and I use three or four of their applications every day. I suppose I have some concern over privacy issues, but I imagine that the online security will be better than our pharmacy. My only concern would be the use of the host of online services and tools.

There’s a whole lot of conflicting information out here on the internet, and I worry about people using these online services to do a bit too much self-diagnosis.

What do you guys think? Do you use any of the online medical applications? Do you tend to self-diagnose?