Issue : An ailing patient should have easy access to his or her doctor's record of treating similarly afflicted patients. through gaining such access, the ailing patient may better determine whether the doctor is competent to treat medical condition.

In this era where a myriads of diseases are prevalent, it would be an arduous task to classify them taxonomically; and even though such classifications exist, it would be difficult to interpret them completely by a common man. The patient might not be in a position to understand and judge the competency of the doctor based on his or her interpretation of the doctor's earlier records.

The behaviour of a person to a disease very much depends on the patient's body conditions. A person with a good body condition has a better chance to recuperate than a patient whose health records are not that good. For example, the White Blood Cells (WBC) play a very crucial role in providing immunity. A person with better WBC count has a better rate of recuperation, than a person with a lesser rate of WBC. If the doctor oberves fractitious behavior of the ailment during his treatment, he or she may have to change the course of medication prescribed. Thereby the concept of 'One size fits all' cannot be applied in case of treatment.

The patient outwardly can only observe the symptoms of the dieases, but cannot understand the plausible cause for those symptoms. There could be mutiple diseases which surface the same kind of symptoms. The odds of the patient identifying the disease correctly are very less, ipso facto, he or she will not be able to relate it to the correct disease in the doctors history. For example, all kinds of fever ranging to Common Fever to dreadly ailments like Malaria or typhoid are characterized by a raise in temperature, the patient might not be in a position to understand the difference and thereby concluding it as a wrong disease. Also, the discussed issue calls for the patient to be literate enough to understand the medical argot, which again is not a common thing to find.

The access to doctor previous treatments, while having moral scruples attached to it, jeopardizes the doctor-patient privacy of the previous patients. This may inturn adversely affect the treatment since the patient will not be willing to share all the information. Also, during the treatment, the patient should have complete faith in the doctor. Accessing such previous records, might force the patient to come to conclusions in surmise, which inturn ramshackles the belief, there by not helping the patient.

Hence, for the above cited reasons, the access to the doctors previous treatment records cannot really be used to determine if the doctor is competent enough to treat the medical condition.