A Hawaiian tropical breeze blew in the trees, and the nutty smell of Banana Boat lingered in the air. It was supposed to be the vacation of a lifetime. There was supposed to be tanning, sand, sun and pineapple...and a frustrating trip to Kaiser?
On a family trip to Hawaii my younger sister started having sinus pain, which for her is a general symptom of an ear infection. The plane ride back home would have been unpleasant, and possibly dangerous for her to go without starting antibiotics for the infection. So we though it would be no big deal since we have Kaiser, and there was an office literally two minutes away from our condo.
We went into Kaiser, and provided the receptionist with my sister's medical number, and told her that we were from California. She was unable to look up my sister's record. We started to get irritated because we have never had an issue before.
In order for us to be seen, she had to populate a new Kaiser medical number, and take down all of our information that should have been at Kaiser's fingertips because she said they weren't connected to the electronic system that the rest of Kaiser has been boasting about. After all, haven't they been proudly bragging about being the first medical center to be fully electronic? They've been working for 10 years to go paperless... but why would one of the 50 states be an exception to this? It was one of the most frustrating doctor experiences that I have had.
This came after the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requires that implementation of Electronic Medical Records by the year 2015. This deadline was put into action in 2009 with the HITECH Act of 2009. The Act mandates the implementation by 2015, or there will be fines and revocation/reduction in Medicare reimbursements.
As it stands, according to the Wall Street Journal, only 20 percent of doctors, and 10 percent of hospitals use basic electronic medical records. And according to the Department of Health and Human Services, the others rely on paper systems that are inefficient and subject to damage.
After that incident, I have become more aware of the need for this fully-electronic system. All we should have had to do was provide a medical account number, and all of my sister's medical history should have been right there in front of their eyes. Instead, we had to waste time on our vacation just to get some antibiotics. There is no reason that we should have had to fill out all of her information again, and not only did we have to do that, but the receptionist had to make a phone call reciting much of that information in order to create the new Kaiser number.
Since they weren't able to pull up any of our information, we were unable to pay for her appointment because they couldn't look up the insurance's co-pay. They told us they would send a bill for the charges, when it would have been more convenient to just pay while we were there.
It's about time all the medical facilities go electronic. The rest of the world already has.
