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APCUG Reports
April-June 2007

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Summary of Medical Condition
By Don Singleton
APCUG President

I hope you will forgive me for taking up a little space in APCUG Reports for something that is not user group or computer related, but I started to maintain a document with information that I pass on to any new health care professional (doctor, dentist, home health nurse, EMSA (ambulance) technician, etc) that I dealt with. Many of them have expressed great pleasure in having a concise document with all of the information that they would need to know to treat me, and how they wish all of their patients did the same thing. So I thought that I would mention my Summary of Medical Condition (PDF file here), and suggest that every one at least maintain a document showing every medication they regularly take (including over-the-counter medications), everything (drug, food, or other) they are alergic to, a list of all of the surgeries they have had, with the dates, in case the doctor wants to check something in your hospital record, and the phone number and address of each of your doctors.

In my case I go an additional step further. Every time I am discharged from the hospital I request a copy of my chart for that hospitalization. They are required by HIPAA to provide it. They can charge you a reasonable copying fee, but it should not cost any more than $100. And then I go through that chart page by page, learning exactly what is going on with me. Google has a special page called Google Health (http://www.google.com/Top/Health/) that is pretty good, but while http://64.233.167.99/ is a very cryptic URL, it is even better for explaining all of those big medical terms. If you look up a disease it will ask you do you want information about treatment, symptoms, tests/diagnosis, causes/risk factors, information for patients, information for health professionals, information from medical authorities, or information about alternative medicine. By using those links I have been able to learn a LOT about my various ailments, and I include information both from my chart (particularly discharge summaries and lab results) and from pages I find on Google in my Summary of Medical Condition.