Read up, and ‘Life You Save’ may be your own
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 Sneeze girl gets a diagnosis Dec. 8: Lauren Johnson, a girl appeared on TODAY last month after sneezing constantly for more than a week, updates TODAY’s Meredith on her condition. |
So how do you make the system work for you? First, you have to know your rights. The culture of medicine is so resistant to transparency (to use the latest jargon for old-fashioned candor and honesty) that you’d almost think there’s a law barring patients from learning what’s in their medical records. To the contrary, the law says you have every right to know. Some states go so far as to say that you, the patient, own your own records. And in every state, patients have a right to see every scrap of paper in a doctor’s file and to have a copy made of every X-ray image (with copying charges usually assessed against the patient for the inconvenience caused to the provider).
Second, you need to appreciate why and how we can be our own worst enemies. Psychological forces make a lot of us hesitant to ask for our medical records. No one is eager for bad news, so when it comes to medical information, it’s easy to assume that no news is good news.
We figure that someone somewhere will let us know if we’ve had a worrisome test result. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, of course.
But welcome to the real world, courtesy of medical blogger Dr. Rob Lamberts of Augusta, Georgia, who explains, “A doctor’s office is always on the brink of chaos — with an incredible amount of information coming in and going out, a large number of phone calls, insurance company headaches, and personnel situations that can throw the best system flat on its face. People forget that there are hundreds of other patients with thousands of test results the office is dealing with.”
So one rule Dr. Lamberts emphasizes: “Never assume that no news on test results is good news.” Dr. Lamberts is well credentialed, with board certification in both internal medicine and pediatrics, and he runs a sophisticated, organized office with electronic medical records. So if someone like him talks about the “brink of chaos,” you can imagine how much worse it is in a less well-run office.
Our internal resistance to requesting our own medical records has deeper roots than the no-news-is-good-news assumption. It’s a simple enough step to ask for your own records, but it’s a radical step because you are challenging authority, and that can feel wrong. Researchers have found that humans have a deep-seated attachment to the established and the familiar, even when it can be shown that established ways threaten our very survival.
That explains why societal systems like communism and apartheid can hold the allegiance of their subjects long after any rational outsider can see the system is broken, and it also explains why we persist in trusting an antiquated medical communication system long after we know that something better is needed.
All of the above is to say that I don’t minimize how hard it can be to take this first step of the nine steps I advocate for taking charge of your own health care. If you put it off, if you wait until a health crisis confronts you, it will be far more difficult to take this first step, because our natural tendency to cling to the familiar becomes stronger the more threatened we feel. So it will never be easier than it is right now.
And I can predict one more thing: If you try this first step, you will find that obtaining, reading, and organizing your own medical records will lead you naturally to the other steps necessary to take charge of your own health care. It will become second nature to ask questions, to evaluate, and to make informed decisions that maximize your chances of a long, healthy life.
Reprinted with permission from “The Life You Save: Nine Steps to Finding the Best Medical Care — and Avoiding the Worst” by Patrick Malone (Da Capo Lifelong Books).
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