our own system

This irks me. Really irks me.

In what is otherwise a pretty forward offering, El Camino Hospital has launched its first mobile phone app. All the standard features (find a doctor, ER waiting time, etc.) are included. But it also includes a tool to track medical histories for all the members of the family. Neat.

This, it seems, is the jumping off point. El Camino has anointed the household medical decision maker the “Family Medical Officer.” They even had the audacity to trademark the phrase.

It’s not that this role doesn’t exist, because it does. What is so frighteningly healthcare-centric is the terminology. Give me an example of one household, just one, that uses the phrase “Family Medical Officer.”

I called her mom. You may have called him dad. Some may have called her sweetie. But no one has called him or her “Family Medical Officer.” Or will.

It’s another shining example of healthcare delivery organizations that don’t get people. Patients are people! We’d all be better served by looking through healthcare from their perspective, not ours.

Bonus: If they were really about spreading the terminology, they’d knock off the pretentious “TM” from their future iterations of the phrase.

Since this is going to be nearly a word-for-word pull from his blog, do yourself a favor and read Seth’s blog every day. Healthcare is “pre-digital.” That’s a slam. But also the opportunity:

A brief visit to the emergency room last month reminded me of what an organization that’s pre-digital is like. Six people doing bureaucratic tasks and screening that are artifacts of a paper universe, all in the service of one doctor (and the need to get paid and not get sued). A 90-minute experience so we could see a doctor for ninety seconds.

Wasteful and even dangerous.

Imagine what this is like in a fully digital environment instead. Of course, they’d know everything about your medical history and payment ability from a quick ID scan at the entrance. And you’d know the doctor’s availability before you even walked in, and you would have been shuttled to the urgent care center down the street if there was an uneven load this early in the morning. No questions to guess at the answer (last tetanus shot? Allergies to medications?) because the answers would be known. The drive to the pharmacy might be eliminated, or perhaps the waiting time would be shortened. If this accident or illness is trending, effecting more of the population, we’d know that right away and be able to prevent more of it… Triage would be more efficient as well. The entire process might take ten minutes, with a far better outcome.