Paperwork 2

Yesterday my mom and I spent much of our day in doctors' offices. My mom was interrogated both verbally and on paper. There is the rub! How many times does one have to fill in forms about their medical history? How many more people want to hear you tell your recent health experience? Why do you have to carry your drug prescriptions to the doctor's visit? Why? Why? And who is the wiser? Only you, of course.

Where do I begin? Paper? Rock? Scissors? Oh, that is another blog. Let's stick with paper. As a new patient in a doctor's practice in the US, you must fill out a medical history form. But what if you are so sick or feeble or whatever that you can't do that? Who knows that info except you? Where are all those interrogation forms that you have filled out over the years? Who cares?

As my mom sat filling out the umpteenth medical history form and jotting down her list of medications at the second doctors appointment yesterday, I wondered who actually cared. Now I finally understand how she is able to rattle off the names of her medications. It is becoming clear that if she doesn't know what she is taking, no one else will know. Scarey thought, since my mom is a 86 years young!

In addition to the paperwork Mom filled in, she was interrogated by the first doctor's nurse /assistant. This time the young lady was madly filling in the info. Then the specialist began the questioning and used her laptop to take notes and shuffled through a file of paperwork ( oh no not more!) that she was seeing for the first time.

You can think what you want to think about education, but I can only imagine what would have happened to me as a teacher if during a parent/teacher conference I had started to shuffle through my hundreds of graded papers looking for a student's latest test papers and scores. Since the late 1970's educators have kept their report cards, grade books, and lesson plans electronically! What is with the US medical system?

Other countries in the world have successfully gone electronically in regards to health and medical care. What is taking the US so long to step up to the plate? Bring on the Health Care Program. Call it whatever you want to. Enough of this PAPERsCRAP!