First I must confess that I’m a Gen-X’er through and through (I can hardly remember life without the Internet). I have grown up with it and through the years it has metastasized into every fiber of my being. Like anyone else, I have to ‘unplug’ every now and then but for the most part I have only positive things to say about it.
Not long ago, I went to Africa to tackle Mt. Kilimanjaro. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this trip is how it was planned--yep you guessed it--on the Internet. Although I live in Arkansas, I was joining up with a team out of Kentucky. You name it and we accomplished it online. We researched the route, booked our guide (who lives in Africa), booked hotels and plane tickets, paid for the trip, communicated with our ground transportation there, researched and bought gear, communicated responsibilities, and organized a visit with local friends. In short order, we accomplished virtually everything online. We didn’t have to worry about catching people on the phone. . .the asynchronous aspect of online communication was perfect for our on-the-go lifestyles.
As I was cruising at 39,000 feet crossing the ocean, I realized I forgot one important question--the medication Diamox. Facing the prospect of a climb to 19,340 feet (Kili’s summit), I had been on the fence of using Diamox to help combat potential altitude sickness. I simply forgot to make the decision before I left. No problem. I figured I still had plenty of time. Once I hit the ground in Amsterdam, I would send an e-mail to my primary care physician and get his response once I hit African soil. That would give me two days in Africa to track down some Diamox if he felt it was the right move for me. It was a great plan...except for one thing. My PCP is not accessible through e-mail. The only way to contact him is the phone and that is typically an exercise in futility even when we are on the same continent.
My Kilimanjaro trip gave me plenty of time to ponder this question: Why does my PCP seem to be so slow in adopting email and other forms of information technology? Although I’m a patient, it seems to me my physician and his nurses would be attracted to the asynchronous aspect of the secure e-mail. It could give him the ability to take care of simple, non-emergent questions on his time and in turn give great service to me, his patient. He would be able to provide me links to quality materials that can help give me the confidence to make good decisions. It could also serve to help me make more efficient use of clinic time--only going to see him when I truly need to be there (that could save me some co-pays). To take it a step further, I can only imagine having the ability to go online and request prescription refills, make appointments, download forms prior to a visit, review follow-materials, get lab results, and communicate with office staff. As a patient I would be very attracted to a physician office with such abilities and I imagine it would help his clinic be significantly more efficient. With services like these, I believe my PCP could easily attract new patients and perhaps a better set of patients.
Implementing information technology into an everyday medical practice obviously has its challenges. I certainly don’t pretend to have answers to all those hurdles. I’m just a lone consumer with one desire--good service. As time goes on, I will expect my PCP to move forward with the right approach. In my opinion one small technological step for my PCP would be a giant leap in service for his patients. Remember, I’m an aging Gen-X’er . I expect speedy, convenient answers to everything (thanks Google) and now I’m starting to have health questions. Good thing I didn’t need Diamox.
The American Health Information Management Association has published a book that probes issues surrounding medical identity theft. The book is targeted to health information management professionals, privacy and security officers, and risk managers. It covers preventive policies, internal and external threats, risk and exposure mitigation, HIPAA compliance, and best practices to resolve incidents.
Now in its 17th year, the Aesculapius Award honors excellence in health communication through World Wide Web sites and public service announcements.
The deadline for receipt of entries for the 2008 Aesculapius Award competition is September 5, 2008. Any WWW site or PSA that promotes public awareness, understanding or involvement in health, health care or health policy is eligible. Entries are judged by panels of communications and health professionals. Past honorees include the American Dietetic Association, the American Institute for Cancer Research, American Lung Association, and Texas Heart Institute. The contest is sponsored by the Health Improvement Institute. For information, visit www.hii.org.
Diagnosing heart disease in women is sometimes difficult, but molecular PET and SPECT imagin is beginning to contribute to resolving the problem, writes Johannes Czernin, MD, a professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA. PET/CT's ability to correct for soft tissue attentuation, and its excellent spatial and temporal resolution allows it to quantify blood flow in the various regions of the heart. With SPECT/CT, appropriate soft-tissue attentuation is now possible, reducing the number of false positive findings, Czernin writes.
Months before UCLA Medical Center caught staffers looking at the medical records of Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett learned that a hospital employee had gone through records of her cancer treatments there. UCLA terminated the employee who inappropriately reviewed Fawcett's records. Despite greater attention to medical privacy, the hospital records of high-profile and other patients have been breached across the country as record-keeping systems have become computerized, experts say.
Ha! I got you with an April Fools' headline, now, didn't I? I just couldn't resist an age-old media tradition and use today as the basis for some outlandish humor. Even some otherwise serious publications get in on the act. Do you recall Sidd Finch, the pitcher who could throw a 168-mile-per-hour fastball? Sports Illustrated parlayed Finch into a national sensation in the 1980s. And some decades earlier, the stodgy New York Times ran a photo of a man flying by his own lung power.
What better day than today to join in the merriment with a little IT humor? After all, my computer likes to play April Fools' jokes year-round. It played one just the other day, when I was furiously pounding out e-mails to prospective sources (no, we don't make up those names, unlike the New York Times, which sometimes gets fooled by its own reporters).
Suddenly, in the midst of typing, all my words started coming out like this: Each*word*had*a*funny*symbol*following*it.*Same*for*the*paragraphs. Now that makes the messages a bit hard to read. Not one to burden tech support with such trivial issues, I decided to tackle the problem myself. It had happened once before, only I could not remember either what caused the problem (could 'user error' be in play here?) or how to fix it. So I turned to the Help function on Outlook. After typing in half a dozen key words to define the problem, I finally hit the jackpot. There it was, in black and white, "show or hide formatting marks."
I figured I had it made, and was on my way to typing without all those annoying symbols. Ah, if only computer life were so easy. Call me dumb, but I had those step-by-step instructions right in front of me, and still couldn't figure it out! Turns out my tool bar configuration is not quite the same as the one on the built-in help desk. Finally, after going through some pull-down menus, I was able to locate the answer. Funny thing is, I still don't have the slightest clue how I even managed to turn on those marks in the first place.
Like Yogi Berra said, that was déjà vu all over again. You see, while filing copy from the HIMSS show this past February, my typing inexplicably turned to mush. Somehow, while furiously pounding out my story, I managed to turn on the hidden numbers keypad on my laptop. On this keypad, for example, the u = 4, i = 5, and o = 6. Thus, when I typed, "the CIO said," it came out as "the C56 sa5d." Now my editors here at HealthLeaders give me remarkable leeway, but I knew that they would draw the line at this prose.
Not even the online help desk could help me with this one, so I toted my laptop into the HIMSS convention center, figuring that among 30,000 IT experts, one of them could solve the problem. Several people I approached said they didn't know how to help me, but gave me that quizzical look that suggested they really thought I needed a vacation. Luckily I ran into Neil Versel, the IT blogger who is more technically inclined than I. He knew right away that I had turned on my "numbers lock," and demonstrated the three keys that needed to be depressed--simultaneously--to let my keyboard return to sanity.
What is it about computers that they lend themselves to such shenanigans? Can you imagine what a physician would do if, suddenly, while typing his patient note, he saw a screen half full of numbers? Or what a nurse would do if, while looking up a patient history, hit the submit button and got an error message? Or envision the CFO diligently punching in numbers, when suddenly the screen freezes. I bet they would not be writing lighthearted recollections about it when April 1 rolled around.
Has your computer played a joke on you lately? If so, send it along to me.