Interviewer: Christine Jiang
Interviewee: Patrick @ Highline Physical Therapy, Seattle, WA Date: 9/15/16 Why? Pat is in the medical field and deals with a lot of patient referrals from the community, other hospitals and physicians, friends and family. Physical therapy is usually not covered by insurance companies unless the patient was referred by a primary care or other medical doctor. As such, physical therapists are a "second line of defense" doctor and patients have already provided their medical history and issues to another physician. What hypothesis? Physical Therapists perform their own assessments and aren't as in need of medical histories of patients because they perform more external treatments. What did you learn? Users of Medical Records: Physical therapists don't necessarily need a whole lot of medical history and will perform their own assessments but history of past medical records, medications, and tests/lab work is useful. If a patient had X-rays done, it would be helpful but the physical therapist can perform their job without that information as well. History based treatment: A patient's medical history can be very helpful in what the PT prescribes. For example, if the patient is recommended to do some cardio exercises, it would be helpful to know if they've had past heart conditions that would prevent them from performing exercises that would raise their heart rate above a certain number. "Often times, I don't know if I'm providing accurate care if I don't have the records and the patient doesn't tell me their entire history; or forgets." Factors in EMR decision making: There are EMR systems out there that are more catered to practitioners vs. others that are more catered towards billing. Pat's clinic utilizes a system that is friendlier for billing. There are systems that have built in analysis and recommended diagnosis based on the assessment information the PT puts into the system but their clinic did not purchase that system because of the trade offs in billing capabilities. Surprises? "The clinic uses more paper today with an EMR than they did when they were 100% on paper records. There's a lot of information that they have to print for other users and patients. Also, if they have a new patient, they often come with paper records or have paper records faxed to the clinic. If the sending hospital or clinic doesn't have a system fax capability, they have to print the record to fax it and the receiving end would have to print the fax. Other interesting outcomes? Learn anything about interviewing? Pat would fully support a product that would integrate different EMRs but would advise against creating a new EMR. It's taken institutions a lot to already invest in EMRs and they'd be unlikely to switch if it's already meeting their bare minimum requirements. The target market should be practitioners because they feel the frustration of not having enough information on their patients and often times, patients just don't care about the how/why, they just care about feeling better. He recommended that we focus on 4 things to make our concept appealing: - Save physical condition of doctors (ergonomics of sitting at the computer all day and typing out information) - Save financially (paper costs/paper shredding service costs) - Save patient care/positive patient experience (more face time with patients vs. screen time) - Increase job satisfaction of doctors who want to treat and not fill out paperwork.
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Interviewer: Megan Miller
Interviewee: Nick @ One Medical in the Sunset, SF Date: 9/2/16 Why? I am a customer of One Medical. One of our tasks this week was to explore the process of obtaining medical records from our own provider. What hypothesis? Throughout the years One Medical has emailed my medical info (test results, referrals, etc.) directly to my personal email. I assumed getting my medical records would be similarly easy. What did you learn? 3 ways to get medical records. 1) Use online account to fill out medical release form, but need to FAX it in. Who has a fax machine? 2) Send an email (from the account that's on file) saying "I, (name & DOB), allow One Medical to release my medical records" and then ask for Snail-mail or E-mail. 3) Go into office and fill our form in person. Surprises? Knowing about the security issues around this topic, I asked about the security sending my records via email. Nick responded saying that although their server is "secure," but mine might not be so if I am worried about it I should received my records through another source. Other interesting outcomes? Learn anything about interviewing? When I explained I was doing research for a school project, he highlighted how touchy of a subject "medical records" are. Interesting to think about for future interviews. |
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