I am a fan of health IT beyond the fact that I have been a career clinical informatics professional and healthcare provider. I have known what it is like to be a patient in a system that was not enabled by the promise of health IT. I suffered debilitating injuries at age 19 and endured multiple surgeries as a result of an “original” high-powered first-generation airbag accident (1994), and then again a few years later from an accident involving a redesigned second-generation airbag. I lived with the damage for nearly two decades before a change in our healthcare system toward value-based, patient-centric care, and advances in health IT helped opened up opportunities for me to pioneer my way back to wellness.
[Also: Read more #IHeartHITstories here]
Finding my way back to wellness wasn’t easy under the old, siloed, paper-based health information system. It took more than 19 years of my own research and then several years of ongoing work with my healthcare provider to create a wellness plan to bring me back to full recovery, utilizing precision medicine. Like systems design, my entire frame had to be rebuilt using precise preventive medicine, including vitamins, minerals, chiropractic, massage, and nutrient therapy, in regimented routine, to keep moving my course forward to overcome.
At the American College of Medical Scribe Specialists, of which I am executive director, we believe that our evolving American healthcare system and reimbursement schemes have created an environment that allows us to become partners with our practitioners in our care, and that is where an effective wellness plan and prevention starts. However, we don’t want to see that slip away, and it could do that in our nation if we don’t look up from the technology, and then past it as an end-all, catch-all, to the enabler it can be. That is what we call meaningful use.
– Kristin Hagen is executive director at the American College of Medical Scribe Specialists
This National Health IT Week, HIMSS is giving the industry a platform to share stories about how health IT is progressing. We are at a critical point on the path to healthcare transformation in the U.S. and policymakers want to know if we are making progress. Share your story and help impact policymakers.
