Will healthcare please join us in the 21st Century?
By Shelley Burns
Part one of a two-part blog
As I scanned my e-mail messages this morning, my eye caught two articles, posted side by side, from HealthLeaders Media Marketing Weekly. The first was titled “Parents want e-communication with doctors but few have it.” It reported that the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health found that less than 15 percent of people have electronic communication with their children’s pediatricians, but more than 50 percent want it. I feel their pain!
Our family physician’s office allows me to have an electronic chart, but not my children. My workaround? I send my doctor queries about the kids via MY electronic chart (“JoEllen has had a slight cough for 10 days. No fever and she seems fine. Something going around or do you want to see her?“). My doctor chastises me every time, but…I don’t care. She answers my query first and then chastises, so it works for me. I often need my kids’ immunization records for school, sports, the band, the chess club, for juggling, you name it. The physician’s office is very prompt – they’ll fax it right away – as long as I need it between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
My children – like all children – hand me the permission slip on Sunday evening at 9 p.m., with the wailing declaration that they must return it tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. So, I have an immunization record problem. I’ll leave a message on the doctor’s tortuously long office voice mail that evening, but they must call me back to ensure I’m not requesting immunization records for nefarious purposes. Then I’m in a meeting when they call.
I return the call, but the nurse is with a patient…you KNOW how this goes. My workaround is to keep a record of their immunizations in the notes section of their Outlook contact record. Voila – it’s accessible and can be updated by me, the payer, 24/7 at work, at home, or on my iPhone. (And, so, doctor, when I am frantically typing away on my phone during my kids’ physicals, I’m not answering e-mails. I’m updating their PHRs).
Shelley Burns is director of knowledge management at HMC.
