I personally have had the chance recently to so some light work in the medical field. Just some minor office work, filing, shredding, seeing how it all works. It was in an office that still has walls and wall of health records. One that recently introduced EHR (Electronic Health Records) into the work flow. While sitting there, figuring out which paper belonged to whom, I had an idea.
Standardize the header.
Yes, it might be that simple. When you go through a pile of correspondence, test results, referrals, and other records, there is no standard of format or even color. White paper, yellow paper, green. Horizontal rows of text, vertical. Practice name on top, on the left, on the bottom. Patient name in bold type, in different fonts. If you can even find it. At times you'll find it in the actual text of the 4 paragraphs of professional correspondence. No Re: Patient Name, or anything.
So as a result, you sit there playing word search with each piece of paper. Put that into 400 sheets of paper, and there goes hours and hours of your time. While EHR lets you put all this together into a record, to actually scan the record in you still have to deal with these pieces of paper.
This may not be as much of a problem when the whole system finally goes electronic. But it's not going to anytime soon. There is no national requirement to do so. And that is understandable. These are private companies, and it is not cheap to purchase the software required.
So make a header that is the same for all documents. Patients name large, date of birth, what its all about (Test Result). The state in which they were seen, the name of the place they were seen, and the date in which this document was produced. There you go, everything you need to know, right away.
This would help save a ton of time filing and identifying what is what. EHR management is in place, but tons of specialists, hospitals, etc will mail/fax paper documents to an office all of the time. If it was the law that any legal medical document had to have this header in place, I think the whole health system would run smoother. Even if you had an EHR system in place, when you needed to print a record, have it automatically append this header.
The second solution.
Electronic Health Records are great. They store all that information as 1's and 0's, and there is not a huge patient chart to haul around. But the way it is implemented in some places could be improved. There is still too much paper floated around. The point is to keep the shred queue at a very low number.
First off is to make an entire medical record available online to the right people. That would be the office who keeps the record, the patient, and whatever office or person those two entities agree can see it. If your going to see a knee doctor, you should not have to sit in the waiting room and fill out your complete medical history. You should be able to have your PCP electronically release your history sheet and whatever else would apply to your knee. Click on the documents you want, click release, and done. No print, faxing, filing, mailing, anything.
Getting Facebook involved.
This is a brilliant yet scary idea. Facebook is easily the largest social networking platform in the United States, and also the world I believe. It has united us together for active conversation better than anything out there. Better than the government, than schools, than anything I believe. So, why not be able to access your record via Facebook.
Immediately I see a ton of problems with this. Facebook is a private company. So if something happens with them, this system goes for broke. But to counter that, only involve them as a branch of whatever online record management system your using. Let private companies develop a platform that lets you access these records online. But, have the ability to also access it with Facebook Connect.
How convenient would that be? You log into facebook, you click a health tab on your profile, and you get to see your test results. No getting them mailed, having to have a followup visit. It's all there for you to review at your convenience. Google Health has already started down this path, enabling a few partners to import health records for you to view online.
So in conclusion, there are a few ideas for bettering the health system of America. When you go to an office, and wait forever, it is at times due to the paperwork that is involved getting to you. When you get your blood checked, and you wait 2 weeks for a result, that is because it's buried in a pile of results, and your name is just buried in the mountain of information that is your test result. Standardize the header, let all documents that float around in the medical sector have the same look, at least for the top 1.5 inches of paper.