Is Health IT Sick?

[MCWebsite.Staff]

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[Guest.Visitor]

Is Health IT Sick?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Health IT Sick? **
My dad has had several lengthy hospital stays over the last few years. If anything, hospital-patient communication seems to be getting worse! And heaven forbid that the multiple doctors on the case should be able to communicate with ease and efficiency.

[jbosko@rwbaird.com]

Is Health IT Sick?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Health IT Sick? **
My mom has been in and out of the hospital over the last two years. Her last time was for 3+ weeks and she was moved with the same hospital 3 times. She had 4 different doctors working on four different conditions. Do you think any one of these highly trained and paid professionals could spend 10 minutes together with us explaining what was going on. I even had to get the copy of my mom's power of attorney for health care out and show the hospital that I was entitled to her medical condition. Oh they already had a copy on file, but that information was never transferred to the floor she was on. The need to "protect" the privacy of the patient has replaced common sense and courtesy. Heaven forbid you are ever in a postion where someone is asking for life saving procedure to be done, and NO one has bothered to keep you up to date as to all that has been done for your loved one.

[jgolds2]

Is Health IT Sick?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Health IT Sick? **
My wife and I have had the same experience. She has been recieving treatment at a large prestigous teaching hospital but their information processing is a bad joke. Mistakes in scheduling and ordering wrong or incomplete tests are commonplace events. We joke that everywhere in the hospital there are pamphlets with a picture of a smiling nurse asking "How are we doing?" and requesting one to fill in a questionaire. We think they are on the same par as "Your call is important to us".

[jorphi]

Is Health IT Sick?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Health IT Sick? **
This reply could become long and difficult to follow, so I am going to try to be brief. Sorry for your irritating exposure to hospital(s). The medical profession is no interested in sharing information with patients or patients family. In my experience(3 children, sibling died of AIDS, loss of other friends and family), doctors are more focused on what they can do to resolve the problems than telling you what they have seen. Nurses are more interested in making sure as much info as possible is available to the next shift. If the information never leaves the floor,they are not bothered one way or another. Add to that the aituation that doctors and nurses in general practice or hospitals are in short supply, and you see the lack of opportunity for sufficient reporting/dialogue. So, currently we have an information flow problem. Add to that the situation that IT departments seem more involved in managing their software rather than asking 'How can we make this information more useful?' and you see how the problem compounds. I would love to create a series of package 'connectors' to help this information move along, but, I see the frenzy in the hospitals and wonder when you could get a few minutes of the doctor and nurse time to perform a decent analysis and design. I used to use a doctor that was very busy, and had walls of folders per patient (this was in the mid 1990s). I asked the office manager if there was a possibility of scanning those charts/notes into a data base for electronic retention. The angry glare I received answered my question...I did not receive a spoken response. I think if the doctor had been present at the time, he would not have condoned the response. As you can see the office staff as well as the health care professionals do not seem to have the time to invest in the capture,organization, dissemination of medical information. HIPAA is just another poorly thought out government intrusion. It is an obstacle that I suspect will discourage more people from seeking health care.

[dmcdona1]

Is Health IT Sick?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Health IT Sick? **
I think most of us would agree that hospitals are not fun places. As I was reading this article I, like it seems jorphi was, started thinking that the medical staff probably don't really care if they get a patient's hourly history online somewhere for the family. They just want to keep moving and do as much work as they can on the patients. So, how about the idea of having hospitals have some type of patient representative assigned to every patient. That hospital staff person would constantly keep track of what was going on with that patient. They would update a hospital database, send emails, make phone calls, or whatever it took to keep family and friends informed. There is no perfect system (except for the ones I develop) but something does need to be done about this.

[Guest.Visitor]

Is Health IT Sick?

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The space shuttle blew up. My System i does have problems, even though it is supposed to be the most stable platform. We are all experiencing the inadequacy of mankind. Sometimes we get good experiences and sometimes bad ones. I try to stick with the good when I find them. Some hospitals are good, some are bad. My personal rule is to stay away from any hospital unless you are forced to be admitted.

[SoftwareTrend]

Is Health IT Sick?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Health IT Sick? **
There is not a high level of appreciation there. And it is universal - not a country related thing. Ultimately though, it would be good to have phone calls answered by a bank of dedicated staff, 3 hours of each shift spent by medical staff emailing and otherwise advising relatives of problems. The downside to this is that most hospitals are flat out balancing their budgets as it is in just the medical services. As it stands, to improve the services to Hotel quality service would result in one certainly - your bill (or your insurance bill) escalating dramatically.

[wyzard]

Is Health IT Sick?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Health IT Sick? **
Geisinger Health System is highly computerized and very tech friendly. You can access your health records online: your test results, all medications, weight, blood pressure are all available. You can even leave notes for your doctor and they respond back to you (it sends a message to any email address you enter). Any prescriptions the doctor gives you are printed on a laser printer so the pharmacist has no problem reading them. What makes this even more surprising is that Geisinger is in north central and north east PA, not some big city.

[David Abramowitz]

Is Health IT Sick?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Health IT Sick? **
wyzard wrote: You can access your health records online: your test results, all medications, weight, blood pressure are all available. To me, that is not friendly. It is downright scary!! Dave