You probably take for granted that you should manage your own résumé. After all, it catalogs your professional history and accomplishments—who else would manage it well? But chances are you don’t oversee your own medical records. Until now, doing so has been difficult because bits and pieces of your information are probably scattered across the files of several doctors, hospitals, labs, and pharmacies. That’s an inconvenient—and potentially dangerous—state of affairs, but one a new federal law may help to remedy.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review.