Medical IT, or the lack thereof

I took my daughter to the doctor on Monday. After we were done, we had to be checked out by one of the office people. As I stood there, in line, I noticed the hundreds of patient records stuffed in every conceivable corner. They even had a little cart in this small office to ferry around the razors.

The medical field seems high tech, but it really isn't. They still uses paper-based everything (execot for billing and scheduling. IT makes them money in these areas. Greed wins) I think about how busy this office was, and how many people it took to administer the office, and I understood why the cost of health care is increasing.

Take the pateint's chart. If I went to my family doctor for a condition, and then went to Urgent Care for additional emergency treatment, and then went to another doctor for the same condition, none of these entities would have a clue what tests have already been done, what steps in the diagnosis have been completed, and what should come next. Each provider is an island to himself. This is how a lot of drug abuser get their drugs. They "shop" at several doctor's offices.

The doctor doesn't have the information they need, especially as busy as they now are. All they have are pieces of paper that the doctor has to flip back through to pick up where they left off. God help them if they wanted to do a simple query like "What is the total number of patients we treated this week with step throat by zip-code" This is a trivial question to ask a database (the command would be something like "select zipcode, count(*) from Patients where diagnosis="strep Throat" group by zipcode") This would take weeks to prepare by hand on paper.

Think about how much effort is wasted in this system. The clerk at the doctor types your name onto the chart. Someone else types your name into their scheduling/billing software. Someone else types your name on a HICFA form to bill your insurance. The insurance company has to then reeks your information into their computers. You get a prescription. They give you a piece of paper with squiggly lines of doctor-writhing. You take this R'S to the pharmacy, and the clerk at the pharacy types in the drug and patient info into her computer.

The medical field is reluctant to change, because they don't see the benefit to them. Let's hope the federal government forces the providers to do something soon.