We do not routinely send letters but have the option of ticking the GP
letter box which will produce a computerised letter based on the coding
sheet on the back of the cas card (Emergency Medicine card????). The final
letter will be computer generated as described by others and yourself, BUT
it also has a free text section to allow us to put in the detail that is
almost always needed when you really want to inform the GP.
The free text option is genuinly useful (to us - I have not asked the GP's
;-) )
Our tick boxes are not great, and it would be nice to update them - though
this has cost implications. it does however surprise me that all the cards I
have (personally) seen have a box for surgical airway but not for headache!
Headache has to go down as an "ill defined condition" - which in many cases
it probably is. I am yet to tick surgical airway, but you never know.
Simon.
Simon Carley
SpR in Emergency Medicine
Hope Hospital
Salford
England
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jel Coward <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 22 July 1999 20:54
Subject: Computerised A+E letters
>Apols - this is another one from GP-UK
>
><Insert>
>We have finally been inflicted locally with the computerised cas report and
>they seem to have managed, with some of them, to say less than a blank
sheet
>of paper.
>This week a report had as presenting problem: "OTHER COMPLAINT" and
diagnosis
>of "psychological - general". As I knew the patient and was concerned as to
>what it was all about I sent for a photocopy of the cas. card. It turned
out
>that the patient had been brought in by the police after his wife had
>reported him missing and he had subsequently been found in his car in a pub
>car park with a piece of hose-pipe and in a distressed state.
>In the communication and information age this is a failure of both which
>could have had serious consequences for the patient - especially since it
>became apparent from reading the cas. card, which we no longer routinely
get,
>that the cas. staff seemed not to have bothered to tell the psychiatrists,
>under whose care this man is, what had happened - an omission which I have
>now rectified.
>Does anybody else have similar examples? I must say that computerised
reports
>that I've seen come in from elsewhere do not seem to be quite so dreadful
as
>our local ones.
>
></Insert>
>
>
>Comments?
>
>PS - I recently had a consultant complain about some letters from my
practice
>- our records are fully electronic ie most of us don't actually write (try
it,
>it is wonderful) - but one of my partners does write and enters little on
the
>computer - but he still uses the computer to automatically generate his
>letters, so they have no content - he doesnt seem to notice this when he
signs
>them!
>--
>Jel Coward
>
>..take a look at the Wilderness Emergency Medicine and Command Physician
courses
>
>http://www.wildmedic.org
>
>[log in to unmask]
>
>'There's no such thing as bad weather - just bad clothing"
> Anon Norwegian
>
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