LIVESTRONG BLOG

Thanks for letting me know. I’ll fix it for the next video post.

Am a consultant that implements electronic medical records in hospital organizations… currently working in Fresno, CA at Community Medical Centers. Am sitting right now, as we speak, in an auditorium at the healthcare organization with nurses and physicians listening to an entire demonstration of Epic Systems EMR. Good stuff. Care plans, medications, vital patient information is not on paper that can be lost, but available to anyone at one time providing care for the patient.

I’ve moved around so much lord only knows where all my records are. Many were recorded when I was younger. Ten year olds shouldn’t have to be worrying about this stuff. Maybe my folks have them, maybe they don’t. I know I don’t. I know my current doctor doesn’t. Even the records that my doctor does have, that they took, they’re not search-able, they’re not indexed electronically, they’re not tagged and cross-referenced for quick reference. I ask a question that I know the answer to and they do a cursory thumbing through the pages hoping they’ll get lucky. Probability of success, very low. They have failed me so many time, thank goodness every malady I’ve had so far has been minor. No matter what the concerns are for e-records, they have to be minor compared to the utter failure that paper records have been. Let’s learn from our mistakes and let’s recognize that we’re in the 21st century. We need proper, usable record keeping now more than ever (and exercise).

Privacy and security are the highest priority in e-Health initiatives. The LAF wants to ensure that and data warehouse holding a patient?s information is secure, that a patient knows who has accessed their information, that the information was accessed to benefit the health needs of the patient, and that the patient controls where the information goes.

I think anything that will help keep records more accessible is great. And keeping the electronic records will make it so that they can be kept longer. Some places can and do dispose of records after as little as 3 years. Which is scary, especially for a cancer patient who may have a recurrence. I feel it is vital, and I thank Livestrong for being such an advocate of, that patients NEED and MUST have access and control over their records. I had a bad experience with a surgeon who changed my records because he was worried about being sued. Now I get copies of every lab test, scan, and report. Mistakes can happen, even in electronic records, so if a patient has that control and copies, they can show any problems that may arise. For example* I recently had my 6 month check with my oncologist. His PA who saw me that day said I had been diagnosed at stage 2 with no tumor in the breast. I told her no, that I had been told stage 3b, with a 7.5cm tumor in my breast, as well as the larger one under my arm and lymph node involvement. With the copies of records I had, we were able to find where the mistake had occurred. Scary stuff!
Please, anyone, make sure you know what is in your records.
Thank you LIVESTRONG for doing all you do!

I’m a physician in a 35 person practice. We just bought the GE EMR and it cost $4 million. The reality is EMR does nothing to increase efficiency or decrease cost. Quite the opposite. It slows you down, thus you can see fewer patients in a day and it will increase cost as it allows physicians to code higher by capturing more “bullet points” required my CMS. It’s a great idea and will be much better in ten years, but the software is not ready for prime time.

No one can argue against electronic medical records saving money, increasing convenience, increasing quality of care, and decreasing fraud. The technology to make it a reality is available. The only reason it has not been done are the invalid arguments of Security and “Big Brother”.

Security: when ordering over the Internet first started many people willing to give their credit card to an unknown in a local restaurant did not trust the online sites. The same attitude prevails, but will be overcome with time. I have more trust in a company with leading edge security protecting my records than the local hospital system that faxes copies of paper records around to unsecure locations.

“Big Brother”: Can the government get to your medical records that your medical insurance company has? Why would electronic medical records be a different situation than already exists.

Records are as accurate and as secure as the system allows. How many times have we all seen the occurance of personnel walking along that corridor and the person drops the files and scoop that loose paper up from the floor which maybe contaminated. How many times do we hear of secure government bodies losing paperwork by leaving the files on the car seat or by leaving that lonely box by the trash and the next minute they have gone or have been collected by the trash removers.

Surely to upload and have available at the touch of the screen is much Cleaner living reducing the risk of cross contamination of superbugs etc and surely having on line access for professionals and the patient not only reduces the risks but re assures the patient that they still have some form of control on their life style changes which may affect them or their children. Sometimes a patient can go to the doctors and be told something. How many times does it need to be written on peices of paper to allow some news to sink in. When the good people can access the information them selves by a perusal facility peculier to them them selves. Perhaps coming away from the paper transportation and misfiling can pull us more together to enable us all to see what more we can do for each other and for our health care systems. By allowing health care professionals more time by reducing the paper trawl surely is time which can be invested in reducing the waiting time and increasing the medical efficiencies of any organisation thus reducing costs by billions.
Changes are at times scarey but as we all grow older our lives require more attention unless the professional have the time as the population increases then there will be no time until after trawling through the endless reams of paper which have also cost our planet many trees to get there. Let us compare this to the touch of a clean and managable screen putting you in control with your practitioners/Students and patients. Keep on doing the good.

As the spouse of a retired militay member, I would love to see electronic medical records for all, especially those in the active and reserve militalry. If we did not hand carry our records on every PCS move, there was no guarantee we would ever see them again, and would have to start over with care for chronic conditions. Our new primary care physician enters everything on a laptop as we talk. Although this may be off-putting to those not aware of WHY she is doing that, I for one think it’s a great idea. I recently hauled my bulky mammogram films to another facility. They digitized the ones they needed, then sent my old films back to me – they no longer needed them. Progress!

I loved the commercial, even as many times as I saw it during the Olympics.

I thought this info from IBM was more useful than the G.E. commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeaksbGMp8Y

I say this because:
Its positive, motivating, encouraging…rather than relying on the “scare tactics” as G.E. does.

In the next wave of medical record keeping, tone matters. It isn’t just the tool being “sold” its how its being sold and how the information is designed to i) educate consumers and ii) make them feel.

Great video…thanks for sharing!!!