Keeping Up is Key (I’m Looking at You!)

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I’m thinking of creating a day of the week just for you – perhaps Thirsty Thursday!? Yes!  On Thirsty Thursday we will pour you a nice big glass of knowledge! – or how about a nice pint of informatie (sprichen Sie Deutsch)? Let me know what you think! So, as they say – drink up my friends!

Be Informed – Watch Less News!

You see, we are continually bombarded by media and their wealth of ‘limited’ information. From computers to food, to healthcare and beyond, we are told what we should think and how we should react. The issue at hand is, people are not making ‘informed decisions’ by researching the professional opinion; we’re not looking through the hard facts (books, publications…etc) and in turn are making rash and potentially harmful decisions and yes, we are making decisions that are harmful to the economy. Let’s narrow this to healthcare (of course!):

Responsibility to Your Digital You:

As hospitals one by one convert to Electronic Health Records (EHR), another big piece of your life is becoming available via the internet. Thanks to the media though, chances are you aren’t feeling any better. Day in and day out, we hear about one incident here and one incident there about peoples’ information being stolen or abused – and those two incidents play the piper’s flute-leading opponents to our digital-growth right to Capitol Hill.  What we fail to realize are the 50 more identity thefts and personal intrusions due to items carelessly being left around, forgetting our wallets, phones, leaving  doors open…etc.  The cold-hard truth is – your digital you is just as safe as the analog you, if not safer, as long as you remember to lock it away! Responsibility is a key factor.

The Truth is Out There

As long as you adhere to the rules and responsibilities of digital-living, having your medical information online and maintainable by you with tools such as The Smart Med Card is going to aid in economically stable and affordable healthcare. Medical records are now obtainable much more quickly, information between specialists can be shared on a need-based instant – results: our susceptibility to needless and redundant tests are mitigated, hospital wait times for treatment are lessened and the reduction of error is astonishing as your records can be consulted and searched minute by minute for pertinent facts.  Our dream of affordable and available healthcare, though, is only obtainable through the willingness to accept change and responsibility.

Taking the Wheel

Being in control of your health records on a daily basis will greatly reduce the overall prices of healthcare and greatly increase the quality of care. Medical care providers need to know every pertinent detail when you are receiving treatment and failure to provide these details can result in error, time-waste and in many cases fatality due to miss-diagnosis and accidental mal-treatment – all very costly to the system.

Remember, withholding information due to embarrassment or shame, forgetting or not-knowing your most of your medical history is not only costly to the system, but could be potentially fatal to you.  Doctors and care providers are not here to judge, but not being honest, open and diligent at keeping track of yourself can be costly. Now imagine a million of us doing this daily – the cost of each mistake is in some way continuing healthcare cost increases.

The Moral of the Story:

Today’s moral is this:  don’t fight healthcare progress or change, instead accept it and make it a part of you. The more action we take as a group the more changes for the better we will see. No Government, President or similar can fix our healthcare system – we must discover, accept and use the tools given to us for everything they are.