Numerous studies have shown that the United States spends more than twice the average cost per capita on healthcare than do other wealthy nations, and gets decidedly poorer outcomes.
These poor results are driven in large part by a crisis in our healthcare system that seriously limits our doctors’ ability to treat us properly when we get sick. It costs us dearly not only in dollars, but in lives and the quality of life for millions.
Fortunately, there is a simple, low cost, easy-to-use solution to this crisis available today. All we have to do is embrace it.
The Crisis: Our Medical Record System
Each doctor you have seen throughout your life has treated a part of you at a particular moment, and created a record of that encounter. But none has treated you every time you needed care, so no single doctor has all your records.
Thus, despite what our government or record system vendors say, no care provider can instantly access all your medical records from all your providers at the moment they need them. And if you’ve moved a lot or your former doctors are no longer practicing, your records may not even be available. This means that when you see a doctor today, he/she probably doesn’t know all your current or past issues or how they may impact the issue(s) they are treating at the moment.
The consequences can be severe. Several years ago one important study found that each year, the inability of providers to access their patient’s complete record accounts for about a third of the serious medical errors that harm more than 1 million people and kill around 400 thousand, and account for about a third of the unnecessary visits, tests and procedures doctors order. In addition to unnecessary pain and suffering, this translates into several hundred $billion that we waste annually.
Our federal government has taken this problem very seriously. It has worked diligently for 20 years and spent untold $billions, as have care providers trying to implement the government’s programs, trying to achieve interoperability — the ability of providers to instantly access all their patients’ records from all their other providers when they need them.
But it has failed. Its approach is seriously flawed and still doesn’t work! From the outset it has tried to link all medical record systems via electronic networks so your doctors can enter your name in their computers and instantly access all your medical records. It continues to pursue this approach today. But despite the hundreds of $millions it spends annually trying to make it work, it doesn’t!
Thus, while your doctors may be able to access some of your records in addition to their own today, they definitely can’t access all of them. Making matters worse, they don’t know which records they may be missing or what health and care issues the missing records relate to!
The Solution: MedKaz® — Secure, Low Cost, Easy-to-Use
The solution to this crisis is to adopt MedKaz, the unique, innovative, patient-focused medical record system doctors use ALONGSIDE their electronic medical record (EMR) system.
They use it to streamline their workflow, save time, and access the records and information it contains. With MedKaz, they continue to enter THEIR notes into THEIR system, NOT their patient’s MedKaz. (Their notes are uploaded — automatically when possible — to a MedKaz Server immediately following the visit. Within 24 hours, the Server processes them, makes them searchable, and distributes them as specified by the patient. It pushes copies to the patient’s other providers so they can catch errors before they harm the patient, and emails both the patient and others the patient has specified, to download them — which they do with only three clicks!
Thus, MedKaz contains their patient’s up-to-date lifetime medical record (or as close to it as possible; their older records may no longer be available), plus the application to manage it. When they log on, it generates an up-to-the-minute Health Summary which saves them several minutes understanding their patient’s health history and current issues and frees them to talk more with their patient. (If the visit is a referral, it also will contain the critical Referral Request from the referring doctor; if the patient completed a Pre-Visit Questionnaire, it will contain a comprehensive Complaint Report.) Then, as they examine their patient and need to understand how their other doctors are treating or treated their patient, with only two or three clicks on their patient’s MedKaz they can search and access its contents, diagnose their patient’s immediate problem(s), and develop an action plan to coordinate their care with their patient’s other providers.
How MedKaz® Helps Providers describes MedKaz as the “silver bullet” care providers have been seeking for years to improve healthcare and reduce its cost. It also describes its unique features, how secure it is, how providers use it, how it increases provider efficiency and profits, how patients use it to better manage their care and share their records with anyone they choose, and how it empowers payers — employers, insurers, government — to incentivize doctors and patients to use it and thereby drive down their health insurance costs.
In short, MedKaz® solves the medical record crisis we face easily and simply, and doesn’t require the massive organizational support and related costs that trying to network provider silos requires. As payers, providers and patients embrace it, we’ll enjoy better outcomes and lower per capita cost both locally and nationally. We’ll all be in a much better place!
Learn more here.
