Portals, Websites, and Apps

We really need a single nationwide system of storing health care data. Every doctor I’ve been to in the past three months has a different way of entering and storing data. I have to enter my whole medical history, including medications and allergies, on another form or in another portal. 

It’s a mistake waiting to happen. Especially with brain fog.

And then there’s a different way for each doctor that I have to remember in order to reach the doctor to make or change appointments or to access the results of tests. They still have phone numbers, but many of them are unreachable in practice: I tried for two hours to get through to an office the other day before I gave up.

I mean yeah, what we REALLY need is single payer insurance, where the medical system is organized around health care, and not around profit.

And I’m not going to say that I’m “lucky” I have health insurance, because in the rest of the developed world, that’s a given, the costs are significantly lower, and the list of things that aren’t covered is a lot shorter.

Brain fog

I was already frazzled when I was trying to drive to the occupational therapy appointment the other day, and I did not know that Kessler Rehab has something like a dozen locations in Monmouth County, and I plugged the address into the phone and started driving. 

I drove right past the cardiology office I’d been to the day before, so the route was familiar. It didn’t seem quite right, but covid brain fog, so I figured I was remembering wrong. But I arrived at the address and realized I was in the wrong place: it did not look at all familiar.

I called them, and then told me I was in the wrong location. I was already running late, so I entered Kessler in google maps again and started driving again and then realized the map was taking me to a different wrong Kessler location.

I pulled into a gas station, slowed down, tried to breathe like the occupational therapist is always telling me, found the RIGHT location, pulled a uey, and drove some more. I was half an hour late when I finally arrived.

“Give yourself some grace,” Allizey said, ever so gently.