Remember Joe Isuzu? Back in the 80’s Isuzu, a Japanese car company, broke into the national consciousness with the introduction of Joe as its a new spokesman. In the commercial he would claim remarkable facts about various Isuzu models, such as: • “It has more seats than the Astrodome!” • Hi, I’m Joe Isuzu and …
People are quick to accept non-answers from specialists, to be misconstrued by ER doctors, and to spend a week in the hospital without knowing what is going on. Other doctors are far too willing to accept fragmented care, not knowing the context of the current hospitalization or outpatient consultation.
Thanks for contacting me about my most recent blog post. I\’m sorry to scare your administration about HIPAA information, but I am equally concerned about that and will always do my best to respect the privacy of my patients. At your request I hid even more of that information.
Good news: my local hospital has the fanciest, newest, coolest computer system (costing major bucks, of course) and now is routinely sending me \”transition of care\” documents on my patients.
Bad news: they are horrible.
Seriously, we get several of these documents per day and often can\’t figure out what the document is about. On the bright side, sometimes after taking 10-20 minutes of looking through the 12-14 page document, we do actually gain some useful information.
Today I had a very special experience, one which many of my patients have faced: I was treated like a nobody while at the hospital. Yay me.
