Dying is a messy business. Having watched my father endure the process involving three hospitals and a SNF in the final month, I have been impressed with the primitive nature of medical record keeping today even in the most efficient and effective of medical institutions. My father had a long history of problems with bleeding ulcers resulting in extreme surgery to remove most of his stomach. Lately he had been under the care of an HMO with a Medicare plan. There was no central depository of his medical records. One of the facilities, the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, sought valiantly to locate all of his recent records, but limited staff in other facilities resulted in significant delays in obtaining vital information.
Dad had a spot on his lungs, it was a concern, but relatively minor at the moment considering the fact that he was unable to swallow food and essentially dying of starvation. In fact, that spot had been the subject of concern a number of years earlier and put on a watchful waiting regimen. When it failed to grow, it was determined to not be a major issue. No one of his current care physicians knew that. Dad received treatment from a number of hospitalists who had not obtained records from his primary care and specialty physicians. There was no central depository or source for his medical records, so all of his most recent physicians were starting from scratch trying to piece together an assessment of his current condition without the benefit of knowledge of his past.
Until the day arises when there is a central depository for all medical records, it seems incumbent on those of us who wish to receive the best possible quality of care to undertake the responsibility to obtain copies of all of our own medical records, load them on a personal electronic medical record platform and to make them immediately available, if necessary on an App, CD or other device, for our care providers and concerned family members. This would be particularly helpful to those struggling with the monitoring of elderly parents with failing memories. It might make the difference between life and death, for at least a while.
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