What Is Meant by Healthcare Consumers "Owning" Their Medical Records

I received the following comment from a reader of this blog reacting to a recent post (see: What Are the Consequences of Big Tech Entering the Healthcare Market?):

I'm torn by one of your comments in this post. When you say "We all know that healthcare organizations are sitting on a mountain of data", does that data really belong to the healthcare organizations, or to the people who's medical records comprise that data? Just last week you posted about our health records not belonging to us, so do we really want Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc to get "free" access to our records to mine/use for their use/profit? I would have no problem sharing my health record with a non profit that was aggregating data to improve the health of others, but not with those purely interested in making a profit from it.

I thought that this would be a good time to make a few observations about the implications of allowing healthcare consumers (i.e., patients) to own (and perhaps even control) their own medical records and data. This issue has historically been legislated at the state level. Here is the paragraph from this second blog note link about the state ownership laws:

Although only one U.S. state has deemed a patient the owner of their own EHR, this can easily change at the state level. 20 states give ownership to the hospital/provider, while 29 states leave the issue completely undefined.

Here are a few of my current ideas pertaining to patient ownership of EHR data:

• First of all, companies such as the pharmaceutical companies already have broad access to patient drug datas. This is thus an example of the horse being out of the barn. This same idea was summarized in the second link above by saying that patients lack access to medical records but no one else seems to. Here's the relevant quote from the blog note (see: Your Health Records Don't Belong to You; It's Time for a Change in the State Laws):
  • Marketing firms, pharmaceutical companies and hackers are more likely to see medical records than patients are. And while selling medical data has become a billion-dollar industry, patients don’t see a dime of that profit.....
• We also need to be specific in these discussions about the format in which patient data is released and published and whether the data is deidentified. For example, many articles in clinical journals contain patient clinical data which is aggregated and deidentified. This is absolutely necessary as the basis for clinical research. In other words, patient "ownership" of their medical record should not be construed as limiting appropriate use of that data for medical research. 
• Most discussion of the benefits of ownership of EHR data by patients should focus on access to records and that better outcomes can be achieved when healthcare consumers take personal responsibility for their health maintenance and improvement. 
• The notion of possibly allowing patient to sell there own health data is not without its advocates and there is even an app that will facilitate such sales (see: Can This App That Lets You Sell Your Health Data Cut Your Health Costs?). Of course there is an app for almost everything and they don't necessarily predict the future.