No news is Good news--NOT!!

[wlaldridge]

It's an oft quoted old saying. "No news is good news."

Niki (ILoVeNY25) just used it in a post and I am reminded that we need to caution people to not hear that "old saying" in their head when they don't know what is going on.

Case in point. A year and a half ago, I had an echo as a follow up to monitor my moderate aortic stenosis.

I never got any result for six months since I was dealing with other surgeries and health issues and "no news is good news".

When I finally went looking to get a copy for my records it turned out the echo had me at "severe" stenosis and I needed surgery pronto. I had no time to prepare for much of the changes about to come.

Seems the lab(hospital) sent the report to wrong doc and when it bounced back no one made any effort to get it to my doc or find out who really ordered it(it did cost $1065 and they would have been pretty agressive to collect that if it got overdue, I am thinking).

So the lesson, I learned the hard way and might have cost me my life but for the grace of God and my control freak nature was that:

NO NEWS IS JUST NO NEWS.

Follow up and watch 'em like a hawk. Others just are not as interested or reliable as you yourself should be.

Thanks, Niki, for giving me a reminder. I am not picking on you. You are one of the warmest, nicest and most interesting folks here. I Hope all is going well for you. I guess my event created "a monster" since I now feel I have a mission to keep everyone on point and attending to their info as it flows through the system.

Not only do we need to know the news, it needs to be CORRECT.

I had a recent endoscopic procedure where the narrative described me as a "black male" (I guess from the end he was probing everyone look alike). And, the radiologist reading my xray post AVR described the result of a CABG surgery(I only had a valve replaced with NO by passes). I know that neither of these is really critical, but misinformation or missing information only adds to the potential for more confusion down the road. Is it any wonder that wrong surgeries get performed from time to time?

Let's see what else do I want to rant about?? Nothing more for now.

My best to everyone.

 

[epstns]

Bill, I have to agree. Nobody should ever be any more concerned for our health than we ourselves. The only exception I can think of is the concern of a parent for their child's health, or as we grow older the concern of a child for an elderly parent's health.

I've made it a practice to make appointments with my cardio a week or so after each echo to discuss the report. He knows I will ask for a copy of the report, and we review the interpretation together. So far, so good. I hope he remains that dedicated to my mental health as well as physical health.

We all should learn enough to understand the reports, and ask all the questions we need to ask so that we can be intelligent "owners" of the bodies we live with.

Thanks, Bill, for sharing and showing us how important that is.

 

[Nancy]

I agree also. When I had an opportunity to look over Joe's records, test results, lab results and discharge summaries from a long period of time, I was quite surprised. Some of the copies were unreadable, some pages were missing and some of the summaries had no indication that something traumatic had happened (these were hospitalizations which were for severe problems, unrelated to heart surgery). In fact they hardly said much at all. I found another patient's written report along with Joe's x-rays. I'm sure the x-ray department was looking for that for a long time.

In presenting them to Joe's new specialist I had to write my own summaries with what really happened. I typed it up on colored paper and signed my name, so all would know it was my thoughts, and attached them to whatever report it belonged to.

If I hadn't done that, some very, very important information would not have been available.

I believe this helped in trying to sort out Joe's complicated medical conditions, and made a difference is getting him a treatment that helped him.

It's like anything else in life. You have to do lots of record keeping yourself and be knowledgeable about your or your spouses conditions.

It's not really anyone's fault, just the way things are. Too many hands get into those records, and the paper trail sometimes gets way too big. Fax machines can make poor copies, as can copy machines. When thousands of reports are being copied, who pays attention? Lots of times papers get filed as they come in, and no one but the file clerk observes them, and they really aren't paying attention to the content.

 

[ccrawford]

You guys are right on target as usual. If I was going to start a new career. (Which I am not) It would be in the area of quality assurance/quality improvement in the medical profession. I guess my word for thought would be: If you assume that your medical records will go where they need to go, and be reviewed by those who need to know - then you are in deep DOO DOO.

 

[bvdr]

Yep Chris, I fully agree. Last time I left my PCP's office with my mandatory personal copies, there were also copies belonging to someone else. So much for privacy. On reviewing my hospital records I have picked up more than a handful of errors. On some my first name is "Debbie" instead of Betty. My surgical past is also interesting and diverse.

As someone else said...the system is not perfect.

 

[hensylee]

Found one of my brother's medical records had him as a former 'heavy drinker'......say, what! He's the most staid fella you ever met and NEVER, EVER was a drinker at all. You wonder where this stuff comes from - gremlins???

 

[bvdr]

You know what Ann, one of the most hurtful inaccuracies I ever came across was my dad's death certificate. He died in the fall of 2001 of pulmonary fibrosis and lung cancer. His death certificate said it was secondary to cigarette smoking. My dad smoked all of about 3 years and quit when he was discharged from the service following WWII. I'm sure he was lumped with other statistics to make a political statement somewhere.