In the United States, we spend more than twice the average cost per capita on healthcare than do other wealthy nations, and get 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 be bold enough to 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 of all your encounters. This is true whether you’ve seen your current doctors for years, or only months.
And despite what our government or medical record vendors say, none can instantly access all your medical records from all your providers at the moment they need them. That means when you see a doctor today, he/she doesn’t know all your current or past issues or how they may impact the issue(s) they are treating at the moment. That’s the problem and root of our healthcare crisis!
It is caused by the fact that all the doctors treating you currently can’t easily or immediately share their records. And if you’ve moved a lot, or your former doctors are no longer practicing, your records may not be available.
The consequences can be severe. Each year, the inability of providers to access their patients’ 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 18 years and spent untold $billions trying to achieve what it calls “interoperability” — the ability of providers to instantly access all his/her patients’ records from all their other providers when they need them.
But it has failed. Its approach is flawed and still doesn’t work! From the outset it has tried to link all doctors’ medical record systems via electronic networks so your doctors could enter your name in their computers and instantly access all your medical records. It continues to pursue this approach today. But despite the tens of $millions it spends annually to create new computer languages, centralized data registries, new administrative organizations and procedures, etc., it doesn’t work!
Thus, your doctors may be able to access some of your records today, but definitely not 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®, a unique, innovative, patient-focused medical record system doctors use ALONGSIDE their electronic medical record (EMR) system. They use it to access the information it contains, NOT as a replacement for their medical record system. They enter THEIR notes into THEIR system, NOT into their patient’s MedKaz®. (Their notes are uploaded to a MedKaz® Server immediately following a visit.)
MedKaz® contains their patient’s lifetime medical record (or as close to it as possible), plus the application to manage it. They access and search its contents to understand their patient’s health issues, both current and past, to diagnose their immediate problem, and to develop an action plan to treat it.
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, providers use it, it increases provider efficiency and profits, 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 drive its adoption and drive down their health insurance costs.
In short, MedKaz® solves the medical record crisis we face. When 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!
