Paperwork Hassle
A sixty year-old man establishes his initial care with his internist for his routine health care needs. As he sits in the waiting room he spends thirty minutes filling out forms asking him for the following:
- name, address, phone numbers
- emergency contacts
- lists of medications
- medications allergies
- lists of previous surgeries/procedures
- lists of all his medical illnesses
- previous physicians that have cared for him
After filling out all of this information, he is then seen by his internist. His internist notes that he has several risk factors for underlying heart disease and refers him to a cardiologist for cardiac risk stratification and further testing.
Two days later, he is sitting in the office of his cardiologist and spends another thirty minutes filling out forms containing the same information that he just gave to his internist.
He is evalutated by his cardiologist who then orders several labs and imaging studies at the local hospital.
He then goes to the local hospital where he then spends another thirty minutes answering the same questions.
Early, next week he returns to his cardiologist's office to review the results of his studies. His cardiologist determines that he then needs a cardiac catheterization to rule out any significant blockages in the arteries of his heart.
The next day he goes back to the local hospital, to the day surgery area to get admitted. Once there, the day surgery nurse spends another thirty minutes asking him the same questions that he has already answered three times before. Frustrated, he begins to think that it would be nice if all his records were stored somewhere so that the nurse could simply review them on the computer. It seems as if all of these health care providers don't communicate with each other.
His cardiac catheterization goes well, but unfortunately, it outlines several blockages in the two main arteries of his heart. The cardiologist then refers him to a cardio-thoracic surgeon for bypass surgery.
Three days later, he is sitting in the surgeons office. He then spends another thirty minutes filling out similar forms asking the same exact questions.
On the day of his surgery, he meets his anesthesiologist, who then asks him the same exact questions that he has answered five separate times already.
He is now convinced that there has to be a more efficient way to pass information from one health care provider to the next.
His cardiac surgery goes well and he is discharged from the hospital three days later.
This provides yet another example of how a medical record archive can assist health care providers and streamline patient care....
