{"id":8899,"date":"2016-08-12T21:41:54","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T01:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8899"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:51:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:51:17","slug":"fill-in-the-blank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8899","title":{"rendered":"Fill in the blank"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because Tom can’t write much yet, I’m filling out his medical forms. It’s bad enough doing these stupid pieces of paper for myself; doing them for someone else is a real pain in the arse.<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all: Why the hell are these forms still on PAPER?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The big advance for medical offices has been that you can now download the forms and fill them out in advance – but you have to print them out and use a pen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why on earth can’t they supply fillable PDFs? I can type about four times as fast as I can write by hand, and then the office would save the labor of transcribing what I write. Plus, imagine how many errors are made in the transcription process by a harried office worker trying to decipher the form of a patient with bad handwriting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I know it’s possible to do medical forms electronically. Last year I went to an oral surgeon’s office and THEY had electronic forms. Hallelujah! Welcome to the 21st century!<\/span><\/p>\n

Next: repetition. I’ll get three forms for one doctor visit, and each one asks for the same damn info – name, address, date of birth, contact, etc. These days, I just write “same as previous form.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh my: List all medications, doses and frequencies. This question is\u00a0easy for me because I can\u00a0leave it blank. Now for Tom it’s “see attached list.”<\/p>\n

Then there’s the actual substantive questions. Tom and I had quite a discussion about the lists of “Do you now or have you ever had ….”<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean, seriously, who hasn’t had diarrhea, trouble sleeping, stomach pains, or headaches?<\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t know what level of any symptoms would be considered unusual or noteworthy. That’s why I’m going to a doctor, right?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tom remembers laughing at those forms when he was an Army Ranger. Have you ever had shortness of breath? Well, usually when doing 40-mile road marches it happens a few times. Muscular pain? Yeah, but it goes away if you have a couple hours when you can put down that 100-pound rucksack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which leads to the real puzzle about medical forms: How honest do you suppose people are filling out these forms? Does anyone but a teetotaler accurately depict their drinking patterns? Do you reckon\u00a0people might say that they exercise three to\u00a0five times a week\u00a0when really it’s more like twice a month?<\/span><\/p>\n

I wonder what the job is called for designing medical forms. I want that job. Because they should be written by real patients.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2015, the first year that I was ever given a medical form that could be filled in electronically.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because Tom can’t write much yet, I’m filling out his medical forms. It’s bad enough doing these stupid pieces of paper for myself; doing them for someone else is a real pain in the arse. First of all: Why the hell are these forms still on PAPER?\u00a0 The big advance for medical offices has been … read more Fill in the blank<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[67,459,43,1164,654,56,1165,20],"class_list":["post-8899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-67","tag-efficiency","tag-error","tag-forms","tag-medicine","tag-paper","tag-questions","tag-tom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8902,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899\/revisions\/8902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}