By Tamara Baluja – Globe and Mail – April 13, 2011
Been in practice for 137 years – still waiting to see more than scribbles on referral pads,
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lab prescription pads that are detailed and patient‘s who have access to more than memory for their previous dental history. It is not my intention to be dismissive, but it’s the Internet world, digital storage, cloud computing – VPN networks, encryption and security. Why are patient records stored on one office computer not readily transferable to another, why the redundancy. There are medical questionnaires and referral forms on websites and still – nadda – can’t get folks to evolve. Change is hard, but what’s harder is to diagnosis and address real problems with no sense of what has gone on and who has done what, when and why.
Fortunately, dentists don’t kill many people with Tylenol 3 (worst drug in dentistry) and Penicillin V prescriptions (second worst drug)…..but it is realistic to move the EHR agenda forward and faster. This is why there is a comments section on this blog……….it’s called viral for a reason………someone in the know should post an answer and then lots of people can know and share that information……
Read the article LINK from todays Globe and Mail and ponder on how much simpler our lives would be,how much more effective we’d be in terms of treatment planning if our patients had one data resource for anyone and everyone to draw down from or when changes are made,they are all known.
I’m sure many of us have parents or relatives who have lists upon lists of the medications they are on, the doses, when to take them et al. But ask them if they know what they are for…..in the vast majority of cases…..they simply don’t know. Most dental patients don’t remember then name of the periodontist they saw 10 years ago which doesn’t help much if you are trying to figure out whether the current clinical situation is stable or recidivistic.
Start small, give patients a flash drive with their records…..the rest will come in time.
