Continuum of Patient Care

[STXmedic]

So I've noticed that many of my co-workers lack an appreciation of how sick some of our patients really are. After making 8 abdominal pains in the same shift and never seeing any kind of diagnosis, many of these patients just become "trolls" in their eyes. They fail to see that the 70yo abdominal pain they brought in was a AAA leaking into their abdominal cavity, or the difficulty breathing was an undiagnosed aortic stenosis.

I know many medics remedy this by simply calling the ED or talking to the nurse later on to get a follow-up on some patients. However, at a very large city with many hospitals who all have heavy call volumes, that's easier said than done.

So my question is: Does anybody use, or know of a company that uses a system or program that interfaces with the hospital that allows a medic to track their patient's diagnosis and maybe treatment plan throughout their hospital stay? Can anybody see any issues that would arise with a program like this? HIPAA? The way it would work in my mind is the medic logging into a database, and having it populate with recent patients the medic has transported.

Some of our medic's attitudes is a little disturbing, so I'm looking for something to implement to open their eyes a little. Help them realize that all of these patients aren't just "trolls" or being overly dramatic.

 

[CMHills]

Never heard of such a thing... it seems like the only services that could get away with that are ambos running out of hospitals. It's just a hunch, but I have a feeling that any other FD/EMS service would have to do all kinds of paperwork to be allowed to do that - be classified as a different sort of service maybe. Again, it's just a hunch. I really can see it going both ways.

Whatever the technicalities are, let me know if you manage to pull it off. That seems like a wonderful idea. Not only could it possibly shed some light on the more cynical EMSers' eyes, but for those of us with the opposite problem - a tendency to care a little too much - it could provide some sort of closure for a given run.

 

[bigbaldguy]

There is a system in place at Willowbrook near Houston that functions a bit like what you are describing. You can fill out a form requesting to be updated on your patient. I'm not entirely sure how it works as I've never used it but I've really wanted to fill out the form a few times.

I think that getting some feedback on our patients would be a great way of making improvements internally. The easier they make it to get that info the more likely medics are to request it.

 

[Epi-do]

Our department is working with area hospitals to get a system like that in place. The software we use for our PCRs would be electronically transmitted to the hospital and automatically attach itself to the pt's hospital chart. We would then be able to log into the web-based version of the software to pull up our charts, and access specified information from the hospital chart, such as diagnosis at time of discharge/admission.

They are in the initial steps of trying to get the system up and going, so we don't know the specifics of how it is going to work (or when it will go live), but it would be awesome to be able to follow-up on patients without having to send emails through our chain of command to the medical director and waiting for him to follow-up and get back to us.

 

[fma08]

Our supervisor is good about looking into that info for us if we request. I've had a couple where I wondered what happened after they got to the hospital. All I did was ask her and within a week or so I usually had an update and info.

 

[chillybreeze]

I would love to be able to check on some of our patients. We can usually call the hospital and get a status update but it can be kind of a headache sometimes.

 

[Smash]

We regularly stop in to ICU to check up on patients, or just ring for info. Some of the staff don't like giving details over the phone which is fair enough, however we get to know most of the docs so it's not usually an issue. We generally know the senior docs at various ERs so that is easy to follow as well. We also regularly attend PCI audit meetings with the local hospital's cardiology department and also M&M meetings.