| | July 20158There was a movie out recently about the life of Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist with Lou Gehrig's disease. One of the threads of the story relates to the ongoing search in physics for a unified theory of everything--a single equation that explains every phenomena. What a lofty goal! Every time science thinks it has it, something new is discovered that doesn't quite fit, and things have to be rethought. It is attractive to think that the universe has one set of laws, but as big as the universe is, it may be some time before we figure that out, if in fact we ever do. But people like Dr. Hawking continue to diligently strive to get us there.Health care tech needs to take a cue from physics. We need to find a unified theory of data, one standard of electronic records that is usable for everything. Like our friends in physics, we may find the way a huge challenge, and every time we think we may be close; something new comes up to disrupt us. But like Dr. Hawking, we should keep striving. Please allow me to give some examples of why this is critical. I am sure if you look, you'll find similar situations in your systems.A boy I'll call Steve is the son of a doctor, whom I'll call Sam, and a nurse, whom I'll call Cindy. Steve got sick one Sunday with a sore throat, and Sam took him to the local urgent care, figuring he'd need some tests to determine what was wrong. The urgent care was in the main hospital building, and this particular day it was not very busy. In fact, Steve was the only patient there. The doctor at the urgent care determined that Steve needed a blood test for Mono, but also recognized that Steve was already a little dehydrated, and the facility's phlebotomist was new. Being that the hospital had a skilled lab tech around 24/7, it was decided that Steve should walk over to the lab for the test, to avoid a hard stick. When Steve and his parents got there, the tech realized that the lab and urgent care facility was not the same business unit, so Steve needed to be registered in the hospital system. Off they went to admitting, where a sign said to call the house supervisor for help. The family did so, and was told that the Emergency Department handled Sunday registrations, and they should proceed there. So off they went. When they arrived, the ED clerk had no idea what to do, and it took multiple calls to finally figure it out. Once done, Steve and his family were sent back to the lab. By then, the tech had been called to draw stat labs in the ICU. Finally, she returned and drew the blood. All turned out fine in the end, but not without making a sick child and his family walk literally from one end of the building to the other multiple times because the records systems did not share data. They noted also that they had `NOT ONCE' left the building. In their minds, they were in the same facility, even if business units were different. That mattered little to them. They just wanted to get Steve taken care of. This was a huge waste of time, inefficient, decidedly patient-UN-friendly, and potentially dangerous to Steve and others who could A Unified Theory of EverythingBy Robert Sawicki, SVP of Supportive Care, OSF Health Care OpinionIn my
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