Comments on: Doctors' digital duty

Wayne Owens and Frank Richards say a dated medical-technology system is in a state of emergency.

[Amigoid]

Dammit Jim I'm a Doctor, not an IT Geek

My wife works as a Chiropractor at Kaiser and they are working towards more computer entry of the patients data, however more work needs to be done to help teach/support Doctors in using this technology. She's not a luddite; she has her own desktop at home and is comfortable using IM and email, but the computer systems are still not user-friendly. Don't even get me started on whats required for Medicare Part B support. We spent months trying to get that set up to work for her older patients and its so much of a hassle that she no longer offers that for new patients. I can only imagine there are many other small practices that are overwhelmed with HPPA privacy regulations, and all the hoops involved to switch to electronic filing for reembursement, that they instead to just opt for a cash practice.

[TomMariner]

Standards Exist

I am in the medical imaging part of Electronic Health Records and have been in on many official and unoffical conversations about the plan to use IT to improve our health care system.

Most plans I see start out with the comment that was in the article that we have to set standards. Wrong! That is a total waste of time and will do nothing but create jobs for mega degreed folks who will redo work that has already been done and ratified.

In my end of the business the standard is DICOM and it specifies everything from how a physician can order an imaging study to how the resulting images are stored, viewed and connected to a patient. Most other areas of health care have similar standards. If we really want to get this thing done in our lifetimes we have to immediately accept whatever protocols and standards have been worked out over decades and begin implementing them. Since most of the definitions are in object terms and are concise and unambiguous, they are very easy to convert to modern computing systems, say XML.

I hate to put a billion dollars worth of consultants and goverment employees out of work and save five years, but if it is a crisis, let's act like it and get to a conclusion as expeditiously as possible.

By the way, since emergency care (which is a part of healthcare) has to do with treating catastrophy victims, we will also be striking a blow for effective homeland security.

[casstee2000]

If Dr.'s wont, patients should !

If physicians cannot or will not move into the safer digital medical record arena patients need to know that they can. Virtually every study on the efficacy of EMR?s concludes that they can create a safer and better medical outcome at a LOWER expense. Medical errors are expensive in their human and monetary toll.

As I thirty year hospital health care provider I can attest to medical mis-communication as the primary vector causing sentinel events causing unnecessary morbidity and mortality.

Patients need to be as responsible for their healthcare safety as they are for any component of their adult life. It is an unreal expectation to think that a doctor seeing 40-50 patients a day should be more responsible for your health than yourself.

The best way to be a knowledgeable and empowered patient is through knowledge and effective communication with your providers. Personal Health Records (PHR) will accomplish this goal when physicians will not. A PHR will aggregate your specific medial history including emergency contacts, allergies, medical history, conditions, medications and any possible interactions. Most importantly, you control who sees what and when. In the event of a disaster, moving, seeing a new specialist or traveling for business you can always be prepared by having your information available in a standard XML, CCR format. You can download your digital information on a simple USB flash drive and always have it with you.

Some PHR only exist out in cyberspace. I for one want more control over my privacy by controlling my own medical record.

Consumer driven healthcare demands that patient be informed consumers and optimize their care. Perhaps the medical digital revolution needs to start from a grassroots swell- the patients!