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In the last month, four Houston-area student athletes have collapsed and died while exercising.

KHOU-TV

John James believes that if he had more access to his son's medical records, he might have been able to spot what he calls missed signals.

One Clear Lake father knows what those families are going through, and now he’s asking the state legislature to step in.

Alex James was six days away from his twentieth birthday when he collapsed while running on the track at Baylor University.

That was four years ago. Alex actually recovered the first time he collapsed. He went to the hospital and his parents had doctors run all kinds of tests.

His father says over the next five days several doctors examined him — but he says no one connected the dots and discovered a chemical imbalance that would return just two weeks later when Alex again collapsed on the track and died.

His father, John James, believes that had he had more access to his son’s medical records during that two week period, he might have been able to spot what he calls missed signals, which he says doctors overlooked.

This week he met with the governor’s office and his state representative to get legislation to address his concerns.

“I think patients need to have access to their records very quickly,” James said. “I think if we had had that in my son’s case we would have seen the change and asked about them.

“It’s not that we would have understood the changes, we weren’t cardiologists, but we would have seen the changes and we would have asked more questions,” James said. “But we didn’t have access to his records.”

James is pushing for new laws to allow patients faster and more complete access to their own records, and written, plain-English explanations of tests and procedures.

He believes had that been the case when his son was in the hospital, he might have spotted discrepancies in diagnoses, which he says doctors overlooked.

“This doctor does this and when he’s done, he hands him off and there’s no integrated thinking about can we put two and two together with this kid and figure out what’s wrong with him?” James asked.

Now James hopes to spend the next year fixing what he says is wrong with a medical system he wishes could have saved his son.

One thing James is pushing for is electronic medical records, to automatically connect the dots in complex cases spanning several doctors. The Texas Medical Association is already working on that. Last year it accepted a $1 million grant to help doctors track patient records electronically.