Internist touts benefits of computerized record
Internist touts benefits of computerized record
She’ll live longer because of better records’
You don’t need a huge staff or the backing of a health system or academic center to take advantage of computer-based patient records and reminder systems.
Kim C. Meyers, MD, an internist in Evanston, IL, has proven that point. He is a solo practitioner who has a fully computer-based patient record. Even without using the reminder system provided by his software, he says the conciseness and ease of the computer-based record has helped him keep track of needed preventive care.
Patients with chronic or multiple health problems accumulate massive paper charts, notes Meyers. When he transferred information from the charts into a computer-based summary work he did with the help of a college student he hired Meyers says his retrieval of information improved dramatically.
On one page, he can see previous lab results, surgeries, medication use, and other patient information. "I know far more about that patient than I ever knew before," says Meyers, whose practice served as a test site for HealthPoint ACS, a Windows-based clinical information system that was launched in December by Durham, NC-based HealthPoint.
For example, Meyers treated a young woman who had a mammogram that showed a suspicious area. She had a follow-up mammogram six months later that was normal, but Meyers had advised her that the radiologist recommended another six-month follow-up. Soon afterward, the woman had a serious asthma attack, and both her attention and Meyer’s was taken with stabilizing that illness.
Three years later, Meyers was summarizing her chart to make a computer record and discovered that she had never had the suggested mammogram. He advised her to follow up, and the mammogram showed an early and treatable stage of cancer in the other breast. (The suspicious site found earlier was still benign.)
"You get so focused on the current issue before you," says Meyers. By the time the patient’s asthma was under control, her mammography history was buried beneath other papers. "It really is hard to keep up with all these matters with the paper chart," he says.
Meyers, who is a strong believer that computer technology can enhance medical care delivery, found that case to be an example of the advantages of more efficient information retrieval. "She’s going to live longer because I have better records," he says.
[Editor’s note: For more information about the HealthPoint ACS system, contact Ken Kilgore, HealthPoint, 2510 Meridian Parkway, Durham, NC 27713. Telephone: (800) 452-9653. Web site: http://www.healthpoint.com.]
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