VistA Point
With all the advances in medicine, you might be surprised at how many hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices still perform an important function with medieval technology.
Your medical record—your “chart”—is probably a collection of papers in a manila folder. Actually, several folders: More than likely, you have multiple sets of records, one at each facility where you’ve ever received care. The charts overlap, but unless your primary-care physician has gotten CC’d on everything, odds are slim that definitive documentation of your health history exists.
Not everyone is stuck in the era of quills, ink and parchment. Computer systems have been around for decades. They don’t come cheap, though, and making software interchangeable and interactive hasn’t been a priority of companies in the medical-information business. So, even if one of your physicians is set up for EMR (electronic medical records), there’s a good chance another practitioner would be unable to open your documents.
However, a number of doctors and health-care professionals are looking beyond the limitations. They’re creating a universally applicable EMR system that anyone with a server and base software can operate—and they’re doing it in the public domain.
At the forefront of this movement stands Oroville Hospital, which has contributed five-dozen modifications to the macro-program and is poised to go completely paperless within a matter of months.
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