Exceptional Experiences at Community Health Network

I found some more links I wanted to share about guidelines for creating mobile sites:

Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0
The W3C’s mobile site design guideline.

Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web
This author doesn’t agree with the W3C guidelines.  He provides many detailed guidelines.

These two links along with the others I provided in More Mobile Site Design Suggestions and my thoughts on mobile site design provide an excellent overview that should point anyone thinking about or creating a mobile site in the right direction.

PEDIATRICS Vol. 121 No. 6 June 2008, pp. 1281-1286 (doi:10.1542/peds.2008-0939)

Simple febrile seizure is a benign and common event in children between the ages of 6 and 60 months.  Nearly all children have an excellent prognosis.  Although there is evidence that both continuous antiepileptic therapy with phenobarbital, primidone, or valproic acid and intermittent therapy with oral diazepam are effective in reducing the risk of recurrence, the potential toxicities associated with antiepileptic drugs outweigh the relatively minor risks associated with simple febrile seizures.  As such, long-term therapy is not recommended.  In situations in which parental anxiety associated with febrile seizures is severe, intermittent oral diazepam at the onset of febrile illness may be effective in preventing recurrence. Although antipyretics may improve the comfort of the child, they will not prevent febrile seizures.

Read the full guideline on the AAP web site below.

http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;121/6/1281

The American Academy of Pediatrics has responded to the American Heart Association’s recent recommendation that children taking stimulant medications for ADHD receive an ECG. The Academy does not recommend screening ECGs unless the patient’s history, family history or the physical examination raises concerns.

Read the full statement on the AAP web site below along with background material.

http://www.aap.org/new/ecg-adhd.htm

One of my favorite authors is Philip K. Dick. One of the major themes he writes about in his work is what is real, what is reality. He presents situations that make the reader question what they perceive and understand that every person has a subjective point of view that may vary wildly from others viewpoints.

With this in mind I have a short quiz for you:

In regards to personal health records (PHRs) whose viewpoint is the most accurate and complete?

1. The hospital
2. The primary care doctor
3. The specialist
4. The patient

Answers:

1. The hospital has the information from a patient’s last visit in the hospital. The care a patient has received after being discharged is not updated in the hospital’s system.

2. The primary care doctor receives information from hospital stays, and care other doctors have given to the patient. Usually by fax or mail and generally with some delay. And the information may not be complete.

3. The specialist may not have information from a patient’s stay in the hospital unless the specialist ordered the procedure or patient requests that the specialist receives it.

4. ANSWER: The patient is the center of all of these relationships. The patient knows what procedures they have had, what conditions they have, and what medications they are taking. In addition, the patient may not be following the instructions that the physicians have given them including medication dosage directions.

I think that patients believe that all of the health care providers’ systems are connected and talking to each other. That is simply not true. This explains why patients are repeatedly asked to fill out the same information on a clipboard each time they interact with a health care provider. This is why the patient has the most complete picture of their health care and can update their personal health record with this picture.

After my last post about mobile site development, I found two other resources that I thought were good and expanded on my basic thoughts about designing a mobile site.

Mobile Web Developer’s Guide which I found on Network Solutions’ web site.

And Get your website ready for the Mobile Web in 10 steps which I found in a Google search.

What I find the most interesting about developing sites for mobile devices is that it takes me back to when I was learning web development in the late 90’s when dial-up was the norm and broadband the exception.  But it also adds more form factor challenges because of the size of the devices.

I’ve never really thought much about shopping around for an x-ray, ultrasound or CT scan. But it turns out that being a proactive consumer can make a difference.

Sometimes insurance companies will try to sway patients with respect to where they have their test done. The rationale is that the patient will pay less toward his or her deductible at certain facilities – and that also means the insurance company will pay less for the procedure. What isn’t stated is that the quality of the equipment used at a facility that charges less may not produce the best scan for the radiologist to read, which can lead to a retest (more money out of the patient’s pocket) or a missed diagnosis.

abdominal aortic CT angiogram taken with a 4-slice machine (lower quality)

abdominal aortic CT angiogram taken with a 64-slice machine (higher quality)

Where you get your scan can also impact the access your physician has to the image. Community imaging centers are electronically integrated, so network physicians have direct access to the images. They can compare scans that have been taken over time to identify any changes that may have occurred, and they can have the image on-screen during a procedure in the operating room.

It’s worth investigating why you may pay less at one imaging center over another. There may be an important reason!