Better tools go beyond just medical records, as you can read here, they have one. One item of interest though was how the one patient was missing an attendance bonus for tending to his appointments during working hours, something wrong with this? The cure for this was email.
The problem is though for the MD, this is extra non compensated time, and hopefully some of the efforts being worked on today will allow for such compensation for the physicians soon, but this is just one tool. Reading information from the web today is also a big part of the patient's role as this physician states, one 15 minute consult can't cover it all. BD
My office has invested heavily in an electronic medical record to track and monitor chronic conditions with little financial return.
Still, the system helped me notice that a patient's control of his diabetes had been slipping for a year. Repeating the mantra of diet and exercise wasn't getting us anywhere. He would promise to do better, yet the results never improved.
Adding more pills over the last year wasn't improving his blood sugar either. It was time for a radical lifestyle adjustment or the start of insulin. He wasn't happy about either option but reluctantly agreed to give insulin a go.
He has been coming into the office about four times a year. And his employer-based insurance was paying for his visits, but missing work to make appointments with me during normal business hours was costing him his attendance bonus and undermining my efforts to get tighter control of his diabetes.
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