Worried parents bring a small 5-year-old boy to his primary physician’s office. The boy seems to have influenza, but is not recovering and is rapidly becoming weaker and less responsive. The physician, realizing that the child is acutely ill, has the office clerk admit the child to the local pediatric unit via a computer system located in the office. Also from the office, the physician orders laboratory and diagnostic tests to be done immediately on the boy’s admittance to the hospital. Because the pediatrician’s office staff sends the patient’s demographic information (name, address, date of birth, allergies, insurance information) online to the hospital’s admitting department, the child and his parents report directly to the patient’s room on their arrival. The physician assessment that was completed in the office and the child’s past medical history are already available on the computer in the patient’s room. As the nurse verbalizes the physical assessment while admitting the child, the assessment is entered electronically into the electronic health record through the voice recognition system. The child is attached to noninvasive monitors that continually record vital information into the electronic record. During the nursing assessment, the child indicates that he ate some berries in the woods behind his grandmother’s house. The nurse uses a handheld computer to show him pictures of berries from a pictorial database of poisonous berries indigenous to the region.
He selects a picture of berries that look like the ones he ate. The attending physician at the hospital communicates this information to the primary physician using a pic-tel system, so they are communicating verbally and face-to-face electronically. The pictorial database reveals that the berries contain a particularly virulent poison that causes swift liver failure. From the hospital room, the attending physician searches the most recent literature electronically and discovers a recent journal article about a new treatment for this type of poisoning. The toxicologist in Europe who wrote the article is contacted through the electronic pic-tel/voice system. After the physician reveals the details of the situation, the researcher verifies that the experimental treatment may be effective in this instance if it is begun within 48 hours of the poison’s ingestion. The conversation is stored and sent to the primary physician’s office to be reviewed at the earliest opportunity. Again using the pic-tel system that automatically dials the desired connection, the two local physicians confer concerning the results of the literature search and the conversation with the researcher. The primary physician follows the child’s vital signs and the laboratory results from the office computer workstation across town from the hospital. As the child’s vital signs and blood work indicate a rapid decline in the child’s condition, the two physicians decide to initiate the experimental European treatment. The treatment quickly reverses the liver failure, and the child recovers. All of this is done in less than 24 hours.
This scenario is not especially futuristic. All of the technology described has been available for several years, and organizations throughout the global healthcare delivery system are investigating and implementing information systems for information retrieval, documentation, and decision making. The recovery of this child was dependent on the efficient management and processing of information. The management and processing of information to support decision making in a healthcare practice is a basic necessity in today’s complex and rapidly changing world. The people and organizations that are knowledgeable in this area are those that are successfully affecting patient outcomes. This scenario describes the world that current healthcare students will encounter in their practice settings. Preparation for entering this technological environment is a necessary component of today’s education.
No comments:
Post a Comment