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RSSTracking Your Healthcare Information
by Deresa Claybrook, MS, RHIT
After a cancer diagnosis, it can be incredibly helpful to have an easy-to-use method to track your healthcare information. This is especially true if you are seeing multiple physicians. Your healthcare information is often scattered, and there is no real linkage with your healthcare information behind the scenes. Physicians do not routinely forward everything over to the next physicians even though they each keep a separate record on you. Here are six simple steps that can help you track your healthcare information or that of your loved one.
Pull your information out of the shoeboxes and file cabinets and organize it.
Deresa Claybrook
1 Complete your healthcare
forms.
You are the one who
supplies your physicians
with information, so this information
needs to be accurate. You sit in the
lobby and fill out the forms for the doctors,
but you really need to be doing
this for yourself as well. You should
do this at home so that you can accurately
gather information to make sure
the forms are as accurate as they can
be. Ask for a copy of the healthcare
forms from your provider after you
have completed them. This can save
time in the end.
2 Collect your healthcare
information.
We all need
to be collecting our healthcare
information from every hospital
and physician that we have visited.
You should do this for the last three
visits to get a good start.
3 Organize your healthcare
information.
Pull your
information out of the
shoeboxes and file cabinets and organize
it. You may find it most beneficial
to put things in
chronological
order. Place a
separate divider
in a three-ring
binder for each
family member
to separate the
information.
Knowing what
is in your record
can possibly save you from having
duplicate or unnecessary tests, thereby
saving you time and money.
4 Protect your healthcare
information.
Make sure
that your information is
not lying around so that it can be seen.
Keeping it in a safe deposit box, or a
fireproof box in your home, is a good
idea. If you already save your healthcare
information to a computer, make
sure it is secure with a password and
virus protection. Back up your information
to another location as well.
5 Retrieve your healthcare
information.
The one
thing about healthcare information
is that you need access to it
when you are going to see your physician,
sending the kids to camp, while
traveling, or even in the event of emergency.
You need to be thinking about
how you can retrieve it when you need
it. The only way to do this is to have
access to your healthcare information
at all times. That is why I recommend
that you store your healthcare information
on a USB drive or flash drive so
that you can have access to it, and give
access to it, when you need to. Being
able to retrieve your healthcare information
in an emergency can possibly
save your life.
6 Update your healthcare
information.
Your
healthcare information
has to be updated. When you are given
new medicines, you need to add them
to your list or your form. If you have
a drug that you have become sensitive
to even though you have never had any
problems with it before, you need to
let your doctors know. It really is up
to you to keep track of and update
your healthcare information. Tracking
your healthcare information should be
viewed as a process, not just a onetime
activity.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Deresa Claybrook is the president of Positive Resource Health Care Industry Consultants. For more information or to contact her, visit www.healthcaretracker.org.
This article was originally published in Coping® with Cancer magazine, July/August 2008.
