State:: NJ

Occupation:: Unit Representative

With the advent of advanced computer systems in a hospital setting, not enough departments within any given hospital have an easy way to SHARE health care information about a given patient, and even more hospitals cannot share such information with each OTHER.

One solution would be software that is universal to the system; both within departments, (i.e. Cardiology studies available to Respiratory, available to Nephrology etc.) Also the same within hospitals.

Also important would be the ease of composing information to *patients* with findings and further steps to be taken in far simpler language than is currently available.

I know a lot of the above is talked about, but even most hospitals too much is handwritten. There is no excuse for this. For example, one hospital has scans on patient X. Patient X is sent to another hospital for deeper scans for Y condition. Past records should be sent, before the patient is seen at the second hospital, from the first, but for some reason, there’s a lock on such sharing of information, even when the patient specifically requests it be sent to the 2nd hospital. Some patients are even told because the scans are now on ‘microfiche’ (who uses that in 2011?) they cannot send it to hospital 2. Or they have been digitalized but it would take 6 months to unearth them.

All this makes for bad medicine.