Doctor visits need optimization

You know the drill: Arrive at the doctor’s rooms, fill out 5 forms, duplicating information on each form and then wait for 30 minutes (minimum) for someone to call you to waiting room #2 to wait while the doctor sees the other 3 people that had appointments at the same time as you. Is this the best we can do?

I haven’t blogged in a while, time for a quick rant:

Medical practice is huge business. Recently I was at a medical group where there are 10 or so various types of medical rooms in one building. The parking lot was so full that there were double parked cars in every open nook and cranny in the lot. The receptionists had the stern, harried approach which only comes with trying to tame controlled chaos. It seems the demand for medical practitioners must be outstripping the supply. One possible contributing factor, of countless others no doubt, seems to be that there are too many lawyers* gearing up to rain lawsuits down on the medical practitioners, scaring away potential medical students as well as driving the cost and bureaucracy of the whole industry up.

That might be a tough situation to address, but here’s one that isn’t: The filling out of forms and paperwork and optimizing waiting times. The systems person in me rebels the fifth time I write my name and Social Security number on a badly copied form of some kind while “checking in”. We have had the tools to fix this for years and years. Yes, of course, we have HIPAA and other controls, which impose serious restrictions and barriers to entry on any solution here. But, if we are comfortable enough to bank online then we should be comfortable enough to know that the correct system will result in the privacy needed to adhere to any regulations.

Of course, privacy and doctor visits do not go together. I find it quite amusing that we go to some great lengths to ensure medical record privacy, yet leave some of the most obvious privacy issues in the chain unchecked. Back to the doctor’s waiting room, while reading Bass Fishing Monthly (aside: what’s with waiting rooms and gun, fishing, golf and car magazines?):

Receptionist, in tone of utter disdain: “Take these forms, fill them out. What you here for?”

Patient, in apologetic whisper, for the whole world to hear: “Uh, for a checkup to prepare for my colonoscopy next week.”

Also, while actually IN the doctor’s room, getting my leg chopped open, through the paper-thin “walls” between the consulting rooms:

Doctor: “OK, Mr. Jones, lets take a look at that incision in your belly. Hmm, OK it’s not healing as well as it should be. Let’s prescribe you some anti-biotics”.

Wow, the privacy of it all. By the way, Mr. Jones I hope you are doing better. He was a vet, in a wheelchair, and laughing at the same nonsense in the waiting room that amused me.

This can’t be too futuristic: The first time you join a medical practice you see paper forms for the first and last time. You enter in all your details and one of those friendly, unjaded ladies in the decorative scrubs does some data entry and you and the pen are done. In future, I open up http://mydoctorsgroup.com, click “Make appointment” where I enter in all the details about what I am seeing the doctor about. It already, of course, knows everything it needs to know about me. I get an SMS conforming my appointment, the receptionist has a nice control panel in front of her planning out her day and she can concentrate on her people skills. I can go online and read the doctor’s notes on my previous visits. Make comments, make notes. I can _export_ my records, take them on a USB drive to my other medical practitioner’s office and have them imported into their system. Or I can authorize another medical practitioner’s system to access my records online.

For extra points: The doctor doesn’t schedule 15 patients for 10:30am, some patients actually get a 4:30pm appointment and realistically expect to see the doctor before 5:00pm. I get an SMS on the day of the appointment if the doctor is running more than 30 mins over schedule. The receptionist has a button panel: Notify patients current schedule is [15 mins] [30 mins] [45 mins] [1 hour] behind.

I feel like Lewis Black with his “No flying cars” bit, like the future has let us down. Hoping there is a company out there working on this problem. From Google searching, it looks like there is.

Also, do we need an endowment fund which will reimburse tuition costs for students currently studying to become lawyers, who have a change of heart and decide to become doctors instead? (Sorry, lawyers seems I am picking on you today, please don’t sue me)*

* By reading this article you are agreeing not to sue me, or my pets, for any damages whether emotional, physical, financial, to yourself or your reputation caused by my clear and undisputed negligence. You are also agreeing to not sue any doctors for stupid shit, thus driving away thousands of potential doctors in the process and making me pay a lot more in healthcare costs. While we are at it, you are also agreeing not to put those annoying disclaimers on your email, to stop with the the mind numbingly inane warning labels on the patio chair cushions I just bought, and to cease and desist with those hurried garbled terms and conditions which follow radio advertisements which are too annoying to comprehend and force me to actively seek to NOT purchase any products which have these types of commercials.