Thinking Citizen Blog — Fixing US Health Care One Little Step at a Time (Part I)
Thinking Citizen Blog — Thursday is Health, Health Care and Global Health Policy Day
Today’s Topic — Fixing US Health Care One Little Step at a Time (Part One)
Today’s post is an attempt to begin to collectively put together a punch list for health care — a list of little changes which could be voluntarily adopted by health care professionals that could have the biggest positive impact on the lives of millions, perhaps even saving the lives of thousands through the reduction of medical error rates. The post was triggered by a rather dismaying experience with the dysfunctional status quo. Yesterday’s “Science Day” post focused on three chapters in that story (Vitamin D, Shingles, and Hypertension). Today a list of three little devices that could improve communication between doctors and patients, and doctors and other doctors. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
MAKE LAB REPORTS DIGESTIBLE — Automated Prioritization Algorithm
1. My lab report had over 100 numbers on it. I could not understand even the heading of each line.
2. Lab reports should be made comprehensible so patients can think about them and ask questions.
3. We need lab reports that automatically prioritize the three most important numbers with an explanation as to why these three numbers matter.
NB: Come on guys, this is 2020, not 1980.
TOO MANY COOKS — Expert Interpretation Matrix
1. Before sending the patient the lab report, have all relevant professional players exchange notes, and provide an “expert opinion” summary with the automated report.
2. Separate opinions and reasons can be presented in a simple matrix form.
3. If a consensus can be reached, might be preferable for many patients. Do you want the breakdown or just the bottom line?
NB: Now it is unclear whether or not the relevant professionals even know of the existence of the others. Are doctors just too rushed? How many patients can a single doctor handle? It depends on the quality of information systems and time management skills of each physician. What is the gold standard of patient doctor communication? Any comparative study of medical error rates across countries that relate error rates to the number of patients seen per day per physician?
TOO MANY WORDS FOR THE SAME THING — Vocabulary Matrix for Each Condition
1. Brand names and generic names for drugs differ.
2. One physician uses one name, another another.
3. One pharmacist uses one name, another another.
NB: Compliance suffers if the patient picks up a prescription bottle and does not recognize what is written on the label. No recollection of what it’s for. Exacerbated by polypharmacy — the more drugs, the bigger the problem.
Conclusion: too many names, too many cooks, too many numbers. Disaster. What are the best practices out there that should be universal? Best practices for a more efficient summary of the key information, for use of simple graphics to convey the information, for the expeditious consolidation and communication of information among experts.
YOUR TURN
Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history…. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed. Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters.
