October 2008 FEATURE ARTICLES
From the Editor
All I Want For Christmas
by Michael McBride
Dear Santa, I know you’re busy preparing for the holidays, but just so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, here’s my 2008 list of healthcare wishes:
1. I want to set doctors appointments the same way I choose my airline seats online from a display of available choices.
2. I want the same level of security that protects my private electronic medical records to apply to hospital inter-office and inter-departmental communications. Faxes are so yesterday.
3. I want to review my test results online; and while there, order preapproved medications and refills and schedule follow up visits with my prescribing physicians.
4. When my GP orders a procedure, I want to go online and review the success rates and prices of available physicians who are contracted with my health plan.
5. I want EOBs that I can understand, and hospital bills that don’t look just like EOBs that aren’t bills.
6. I want standards for information exchange, like in banking, so people won’t suffer because their records aren’t available.
7. I want every remote rural ED in America to have direct access to a Level 1 trauma center via the Internet.
8. I want hospitals all over the nation to be able to identify me when I’m unconscious, and have secure access to my medical records and be able to communicate with my primary care providers.
9. I know you’re not a miracle worker, but if you could help Congress to fix Medicare once and for all, it would be a gift to us all.
10. Finally, I want some level of healthcare to be available to all Americans, even if that means subsidized mini-clinics. We subsidize the food industry, why not healthcare?
Thanks,
There’ll be cookies under the tree.
