While I was at the doctor’s office yesterday, I wondered why doctor’s offices don’t use kiosks to collect data from their patients. I hadn’t been to my primary care doctor since 2000 (what can I say–I’m healthy) and that meant that I needed to fill out pages of forms telling them, again and again, my name, social security number and birth date. Wouldn’t it have been easier to sit me down in front of a kiosk terminal, have me complete a simple page of information and have a database correlate all that information and spit something out for the clerk or nurse to shove into my file?
Ok, so there are rickety people out there who can barely walk into a doctor’s office and find a place to sit in the waiting room without help from someone–they can get the wasteful pieces of poorly copied forms. The rest of us can sit down and type in or even just use drop-downs and check boxes to complete the endless forms. I know there is a way to ensure all that data is secure so HIPAA is golden.
When, oh when, are we going to drag everyone kicking and screaming into our brave new world?