Thursday, November 8, 2012

Failing to speak with each other for patient's sake

I was at a training in Florida and  a few people talked about the failure of communication between primary care providers and specialists.  I do not have the answer or the solution, but it seems to me that there is one key element missing in this dialogue, the patient.  Yes, providers need to communicate among themselves regarding patients care, referral, and health status, but they should bring in the patient or parent (if patient is a minor) as part of this conversation.  It fascinates me that we have been able to create effective IT systems that talk to each other effectively, but we continuously fail to perfect it or at least make it efficient among people.  Perhpas patients are not seeing as important, we do talk a lot about measures, performance, quality improvement, but not much about the individual.  All we do around quality improvement is for the patient, is it?  or is it for the payers most invested interest to reduce cost?  I really do not know, you tell me. 

Let me know what you think, there is no wrong answer here as long we respect each others point of view.


Helen Dao, MHA