Wallet Health
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Healthcare policy in the U.S. is all about protecting and nourishing shareholders. While the healthcare insurance and pharmaceutical industries record record profits and growth, the haves are increasingly squeezing the have-nots.
The have-nots include not just the uninsured 47 million and growing pool of Americans, but they include the 123 million more under-insured Americans, who suffer catastrophic financial distress with just a single major health expense.
And they include the three million nurses and most of the 475,000 physicians, whose incomes have shrunk, and whose professional practices have been usurped by demands placed on them from employers (hospitals and healthcare facilities), healthcare insurers and other regulatory agencies.
Individual patients are treated with assembly line tactics by hospitals, diagnostic testing facilities and many physician office practices. Care is fragmented, intense and filled with risks and gaps.
How do you retain control over your health care?
Wallet healthi s one practical and painless way to retain control over at least some of the important aspects of your healthcare.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Collect all of your prescription and over the counter medication instruction guides. Collect all of your available patient medical records (not the bills, unless they describe what procedures and tests were done, and you don’t have the medical records that demonstrate that).
2. Organize the records by date of service: the most recent on top and then work backwards in time. Place these records in a file folder, a notebook, or scan them onto a CD or USB drive.
Your Wallet Reference Guide
a. On a separate sheet, type the names, the doses, and the number of times per day you take each and every medication, supplement and vitamin and what the reason is for taking it. (Everything you take counts - whether it comes from the grocery store, health food store or pharmacy doesn’t matter.)
b. Type your allergies and sensitivities of medications, of foods, of known triggers (pollens, trees, cat fur, detergent, etc.) and list what happens (can’t breathe, skin rash, hives, wheeze, etc.).
c. Type your resuscitation and extraordinary care preferences. These are commonly known as advance directives. Each state has differing patient protections, and if yours uses a health care proxy, or a healthcare durable power of attorney, type the name and working telephone number of the person who serves in that role for you. Know what a do not resuscitate directive means. Know what a living will entails. Include the properly signed forms with the medical records file contents. Make sure that your treating physician or nurse has a current copy.
d. If you have a physician, a nurse or a primary healthcare provider, such as a clinic or office practice, type the name of the provider and include the working contact information.
e. If you are an organ donor (if you’re not already, you should be if you can), type what you intend to donate (solid organs, such as heart, lungs, liver, or skin, bone, and corneas).
Repeat these steps for each member of your household. There should be one file for each person, and there should be one typed reference sheet for each person. If you are the parent, carry the typed sheet for each minor child, as well as for yourself.
Shrink the typed reference guide to a size that you are comfortable carrying in your wallet. Laminate it.
Store it next to your most used form of identification, such as your driver’s license.
Whenever you have a healthcare contact, bring out your wallet reference guide, and use it when completing patient history forms, when being asked for a patient history by any and all healthcare providers (such as a paramedic, an ambulance crew, a clinic receptionist, a physician, a nurse or a registration worker), and whenever you encounter a new healthcare provider, such as when seeing a consulting physician.
In the case of a situation where you aren’t able to communicate, first line providers and emergency department staff will go through personal belongings looking for exactly this information. Your laminated wallet health guide will help them get the precise information they need in order to follow your directives, your preferences and your wishes.
Update each reference guide as anything changes on it.
In all other situations, when there’s time, bring your file of medical records with you. The nurses and physicians will use those records to be able to rapidly and accurately plan your care and treat you most effectively. Those records save time, they save money, and they save you from unnecessary tests, procedures and distress.
Finally, ask for copies of all of your medical records with every healthcare contact. Immediately add them to your personal medical records file.
Take back control of your personal healthcare decisions.
Knowledge and organization are two powerful tools to help you stay in control of your healthcare.