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Vic Smith

On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:42:00 -0400, wrote:

The up side is the pharmacy computer will have your prescription as
soon as the doctor enters it, they won't be giving you incompatible
drugs and billing will be easier. Your x rays and other tests will be
available wherever you go and you might not have to get as many
duplicate tests.
The bad side, you will have less privacy. Your employer may be able to
see whether you really were sick and the DMV will know what you are
taking so that pain pill prescription might show up on the cop's
laptop while he is following you.
I imagine if you want to send NetDetective $69.95 you can get
anyone's records.

Yep. There is no privacy.
BTW, employers have always had the right to make you prove you were at
the doctor when that's how it works for sick pay compensation.
The computerization of medical records is a good thing.
My doc is computerized and carries a laptop. Checking in is simple.
Insurance card and picture id, and a short form asking if any health
condition has changed since the last visit.
Took my wife to a new OB/GYN a few weeks ago and had to fill out about
8 pages of forms. Major hospital group - Lutheran General in Park
Ridge, Il. It's highly rated. I picked it because of good outcomes
for a range of ailments, and fewer scalpels sewed up in incisions.
Wrote our address and her SSN multiple times on multiple pages.
Ignoring the inefficiency of the forms, I figured it could be excused
because she was a new patient.
Then while we were doing the forms a patient came in and was given the
same form package. She protested that she had already filled them in
many times, but the front desk clerk insisted it be done.
When my wife was called to her doc I chatted with the other woman.
She was ****ed about the forms. She'd been coming to this doc for 10
years and the doc had delivered her 3 children.
But she liked the doc, so she put up with it.
Behind the front desk floor-to-ceiling open-front cabinets were
visible, and I saw nurses searching them, and pulling stuff in and
out.
The file cabinets are suspended on ceiling tracks, so one layer
can be swung away to reveal another
Full of manilla folders. Manilla folders now containing my address,
phone number, group id insurance number, and SSN about 4 times
each.
Might have that 10 year patient's stuff 40 times.
Or maybe they get archived to a cave in Nevada to keep the fork lift
guys employed. Those cabinets were overflowing.
I bet they don't do that in modern countries.
But modern countries don't have a sixth of their economies tied up in
the medical and insurance industries.

--Vic