A Bitter Pill to Swallow

Musings of holiday travel.

I was returning from a trip last week that happened to be on the start of the holiday. You know that day, while standing in the security check line you hear things like, “you have to take your shoes off ma’am”, or “no you can’t bring that bottle of hydrogen peroxide through this point”. I live in Texas and I once heard from a passenger at the check point, “I don’t go anywhere without my gun!” And of course I started to see a lot of uniformed people quickly moving towards us. I am not making this up, but I digress.

This story begins in a long holiday check in line with a conversation I am having about doctors and their knowledge of today’s marketing and the internet. The conversation is unexpectedly joined by the man in front of us by openly disagreeing with us. I immediately ask him (as if I didn’t know) if he is a physician. Why yes, internal medicine from Providence. By the time we had gotten through the check point we had learned that he lives in a “blue” state, he works for a large medical group, they are not computerized, the only reason the government wants them computerized is so they can look at everything “going on”, he can do things faster by hand and he knows what all the shorthand doodles he makes in a chart are, he can expand and detail his charts later, and because of all this extra government work his golf handicap has gone from a 3 to a 5! I quickly realized to keep our occupation less public, but alas that did not matter, he never asked.

Now I am sure you are picturing a 70 year old man who should have retired and gotten his golf game back in shape, but no, this is a 56 year old (he told us when I quipped he was too young to be so bitter) man that was well versed on his blackberry. A doctor that point blank told us that as long as he knew what was in the patient chart, what else mattered? If he had to use a computer while seeing a patient he would have to enter in everything before moving on to the next patient. He would not be able to see as many patients. And don’t forget once entered into a computer the government will be spending the next week reading it to see what’s “going on”.

As you can see, I am still obsessed with this encounter as I am writing about it five days later. But in the end I really can’t stop thinking about my last visit to my doctor. I live in Houston and go to the Baylor Family Medicine Clinic and I am giving them the recognition they deserve. I sign in on a computer in the waiting room. The following patients that arrive do not see my name or know I have been there. My doctor talks and types in her terminal during my visit. She pulled up a 13 year old lab test I had in seconds to compare something. She was changing my BP medicine and I told her my pharmacy was the Kroger supermarkets. She immediately went to the internet and looked up Kroger’s $10 medication list and selected one from the list. I checked out and the bill and Rx were waiting for me at the discharge desk. After taking the medication for a couple of days I had a question. I went to my secure patient email on their site and sent the question. I got an answer back within a couple of hours by email delivered to my personal account.

We try to give the best independent analysis here at HITECH Answers, but as a patient, I pick my doctor.

Category: HITECH Updates