Ghosts of Medical Records Present

Medical records are still primarily paper, but electronic forms are relentlessly growing. Medical records are rarely, if ever, just private between patients and their physicians.

Patient’s uneasiness grows as the awareness of the importance of medical records increases. Increasingly, patients are becoming aware as to how information in their record is being shared with entities not having their well-being in mind. (However, few have even a clue as to how many others are accessing their medical information. Paper makes this fact easy to hide. Once the record is copied and mailed, there is no trail for the patient to follow.) There is a growing uneasiness as to the potential harm caused by their health information. Patients increasingly feel they are little valued beyond their potential to deliver profits to entities over which they have no control. Patients still have little input into the content in their records and even less access. Important health information is not even available 20% of the time when they see their physicians.

Physicians increasingly see medical records as more of a growing nuisance. The focus has switched to one of having enough volume or “bullets” in the record in order to simply be paid for services. Doctors increasingly dream of ways to get off the “hamster wheel” that herds patients through the system as the leeches suck away their life blood.
A minority have found that they can use an electronic record in order to create the volume of narrative that is necessary to simply be profitable and remain in business. In 2008, 96% of electronic medical record systems that were in use are of this type. Doctors still mostly seek out systems that can do little more than manage their simple narratives and preserve their obsolete information gathering process. Therefore, these record systems do little more than automate the inefficient, low-value information that is familiar. Because 96% of this health information is only narrative, it makes for pleasant reading, but delivers little gold. So, the gold is usually left for those other than patients and their physicians. For more than 80% of physicians, when asked about using comprehensive electronic medical records, the response is “Bah, Humbug” along with a growing sense of isolation and bitterness.

In a world that is increasingly driven by data, physicians and patients have little. What little data exists in the system is mostly the infected diagnosis and procedure codes that drive the flow of gold in the system. This and associated putrifaction in the disease-care system has caused what could be valuable information in the record to often become an actual threat to both patients and their doctors. Not only are medical records no longer mainly private between patients and their doctors, but the fax machine has increasingly replaced snail-mail as the interoperability exchange of preference.

Increasingly, patients and physicians feel they are pawns in a system bringing great wealth to others, and the doctor-patient relationship has been gravely degraded in many ways.

Even in the present, most physicians say “Bah, Humbug” to electronic records and a re-design of information flow that would allow them to manage patients with less total work, greater patient/physician satisfaction, greater income, and better data. Currently, there is a dearth of good souls to take their hand and show them the path to enlightenment. Rather, the typical approach is little more than to throw in a bunch of computers and software and attempt to turn doctors into data entry clerks. Is it no wonder they would rather work harder doing what is familiar, and cling to ghosts of the past? However, a few have awakened to see that it is possible today to plan/implement medical record systems and information gathering in a fashion offering greater rewards, and have chosen to no longer live with the lingering ghosts of the past. Only a chosen few have discovered that technology can actually allow them to give unto the leeches what belongs to the leeches, and thus free them to be able to focus more on the gold of the doctor-patient relationships.


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