September 27, 2010

A rant about medical records

It is very difficult to convey utterly tedious frustration without — well, without thoroughly boring one’s audience. And hence I will not try to explain the full awfulness of modern medical records and information compartmentalization. But I was personally present 5 times in one recent week while Linda gave detailed information about her contact information, medical history, etc. — and all 5 times it was to the same hospital.

In our case, that just costs time. But the information flow in my father’s case upsets me more. I gave a couple of of examples earlier. Here are some more:

Now, it’s quite possible none of this will have the slightest effect on outcomes for my old and very sick father. But given all the resources that society is spending trying to help him by, among other things, performing medical tests, it is appalling how medical information policies obscure years of information that already exists.

Comments

2 Responses to “A rant about medical records”

  1. Ajay on September 28th, 2010 10:08 am

    I am sorry to hear about your Dad and you suffering so much. I had similar experiences while getting health centre and hospital treatments for myself when I was lastly in the US. It seems that financial health records are much more easily streamlined and accessible with privacy safeguards than health records or health history. It is actually more about how database policies for heatlh history versus credit history is implemented.
    Again- I hope things get better soon.

  2. Doug on September 28th, 2010 12:43 pm

    yes, it’s frustrating, not ideal and inefficient. i’m afraid of what’s to come with more gov’t intrusion.

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