The PROBLEM with healthcare

Posted 21 June, 2007 in problems

Or rather some of the problems. Here’s one possible scenario:

Virginia is for lovers, or so they say, so you and your wife make a beeline to Virginia Beach for a relaxing weekend. No vacation is complete without good food, and diets be damned, you eat a fair amount of everything. Now you’re not feeling well. You’ve ingested something that turned in your stomach and suddenly you begin vomiting. A lot. You’re losing fluids fast. Hours pass and you’re becoming severely dehydrated and delirious. A quick ambulance ride later and you are admitted to the nearby Sentara Bayside Hospital’s emergency room. You’re not from the area, so Sentara is neither your hospital, nor is it in your hospital chain.

Time for paper work. Lots of forms: Insurance. Consent. Previous Medical History. Allergies. Of course, this is the worse time to be asking you to think about anything, let alone the details of your previous medical history. You mean to check the box beside penicillin allergy, but you are distracted by your wife, who is on the phone with her mother. You also missed an entire page where, under better conditions, you would have mentioned that you suffer from mild epilepsy.

Your stomach suddenly seizes and you throw up in the waiting area, which is just enough incentive for the triage nurse to quickly move you to a private room.

A nurse arrives and takes your vitals. Minutes later the physician shows up and, after a brief inspection, concludes that you have a bacterial stomach bug. He prescribes Benzylpenicillin (penicillin G) as the antibiotic. An injection later and you start to feel better. Then, without notice, the epileptic seizures caused by your allergic reaction begin…

This situation would have been much different if

Your hospital had an electronically accessible, universal format of your electronic medical records to which Sentara Bayside could be granted access
The medical record system had a Internet “patient portal” so you could have thoroughly reviewed your information before an emergency requires it