freedomdwarf1
Posts: 6845
Joined: 10/23/2012 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Aylee So what is "New" about this program the NHS is unveiling? From what I understand from my own doctor, it is about consistency in recording such events and any prognosis/action that may have followed. See my post#101. In the US, your private insurance company shares info with your doctor and the hospitals in determining what happened, what qualifies, what gets excluded and what they are going to pay for. If you are in a different state, whoever you see as a locum or temporary doctor, or have to visit ER, they are working blind because they don't know your history. If you relocate to somewhere outside of the coverage area for your insurance company, you have to fill in forms and such or wait some time for your previous insurance company to cough up your records. In our social system here, it's all under one roof - loosely termed the NHS. Individual patient records are recorded and kept by the patients doctor; not a central government database or department. If you relocate, your records are sent to a central office for redirection to the new doctor. And because it's all internal, it is usually very quick. On top of that, if urgent info is needed by a hospital or another doctor, that can be gained electronically from the last registered doctor within moments. The whole point of the new directive is to make things as electronically compatible and as full as they can be, regardless of which electronic system the info is kept on or transferred to. Until recently, just about every hospital and doctor surgery and clinic all had their own individual systems and in most cases, not all the info was "transportable" across all of them. A lot of those older systems have now been replaced with newer and (almost) fully compatible systems so that the new info can be imported from one system to the other. The point being, anything a patient does that is likely to (or does) impinge upon their overall health, that information can be recorded in their personal files. The latest health drive is to watch for obesity and/or rapid weight gain in order to advise patients about diabetes, cancer, and other disorders and what treatments are available for them to avoid such nasties if at all possible. As has already been mentioned, preventative medicine is much cheaper than a cure. So.... if someone ends up in ER for something completely unrelated, their records of any special diets or other medications they are prescribed can be called up from almost anywhere.
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“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell, 1903-1950
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