Will healthcare please join us in the 20th century?
By Shelley Burns
(This is part two of a two-part blog)
This eye-catching article reports that Google is highly regarded as a source of health information. Doctors are still number one, by quite a bit, but my bet is that their influence is going to erode further because of the difficulty inherent in accessing a physician. I experienced this myself.
Unknown to us, my mother-in-law quit taking a prescription drug. We, and her physician, were baffled by her deteriorating mental state. She was becoming unsafe in her apartment and we were frantic. It took us about 10 days to figure it out. After we did, we were relieved, but had concerns about how to restart her medication – bolus? ramp-up? I called the physician – he was on vacation, but I explained it to the nurse. She refused to help, even though I had a healthcare power of attorney, and had been conversing with the physician about Mom’s status almost daily.
“You’ll have to discuss this with Dr. Z.”
I pleaded: “Can’t one of the other physicians just tell me if it’s safe to start this med up at her previous level?”
No, there was no one in the office who was going to talk to me over the phone, and the next appointment that was available for my mother-in-law was weeks out. She would have to be hospitalized before she’d make that appointment. So I went online, and Googled “restarting drug X.”
I found several sites and felt confident enough to restart Mom’s medication. It was successful, although I realize we were lucky, and we would have preferred communicating to a doctor about it. It was only because I was desperate that I turned to Google.
Now, if the results of these two polls, corroborated by my own ubiquitous experiences, don’t demonstrate the importance and necessity of electronic communication and interaction, I don’t know what would. Doctors cannot be available 24/7, but they can sure expand their reach with e-mail, online scheduling, accessible electronic records, and some basic care information.
Hospitals can provide services such as online registration, basic discharge instructions, family communications, and even “traffic” reports in the ED in a more timely fashion and for lower cost (who doesn’t want lower cost in healthcare?). Fair warning, doctors and hospitals, if you want to keep the top spot for health information influence, you’d better be on the ‘Net in ways that benefit your patients.
Shelley Burns is head of knowledge management at HMC.
